Understanding Technological Paradigm Formation: Modelling Industries as Parallel Adaptive Search Mechanisms
- When?
- Wednesday 1 December 2010, 10:00 to 11:00
- Where?
- 39BB02
- Open to:
- Students, Staff
- Speaker:
- Mr Matthew Karlsen
The combination of a dominant (de-facto standard) design and associated search heuristics constitute a `technological paradigm'. Such technological paradigms may emerge as industries evolve, altering the nature of innovative search from exploration to incremental improvement along a `technological trajectory'. Disagreements exist as to the conditions of design standardisation and the relationship between standardisation and related shifts in innovation emphasis.
The complexity of technological designs tends to increase over time via a process of ‘constructional selection’. This process indicates a mechanism relating standardisation to alteration of search heuristics, and progressively 'locks-in' designs at the individual level. However, present models that feature constructional selection do not consider how a standard design emerges at the population level or how the interaction of multiple agents affects the constructional selection process.
The presented research develops an evolutionary computational model to investigate the conditions under which standardisation and change in innovative search occurs within an evolving industry. The specified investigations provide better understanding of the process of dominant design formation and the relationship between innovative search and changes in population size as an industry evolves.
