2025/05/08 by Edward D. Lee, Edward Lee, Christopher P. Kempes +36 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Decision Sciences · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Ecosystem dynamics and resilience #FOS: Physical sciences #Innovation Diffusion and Forecasting #Innovation, Sustainability, Human-Machine Systems #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.05182
openalex publication_date 2025/05/08 · arxiv published 2025/05/08 · arxiv updated 2025/05/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Innovation and obsolescence describe the dynamics of ever-churning social and biological systems, from the development of economic markets to scientific and technological progress to biological evolution. They have been widely discussed, but in isolation, leading to fragmented modeling of their dynamics. This poses a problem for connecting and building on what we know about their shared mechanisms. Here we collectively propose a conceptual and mathematical framework to transcend field boundaries and to explore unifying theoretical frameworks and open challenges. We ring an optimistic note for weaving together disparate threads with key ideas from the wide and largely disconnected literature by focusing on the duality of innovation and obsolescence and by proposing a mathematical framework to unify the metaphors between constitutive elements.