A synergetics approach to disruptive innovation

Emery and Trist were the first to design an influential taxonomy of four social fields to accommodate the perceived emergence of a new type of business environment, the type 4 turbulent field. This captured the predicament of Leading companies suddenly confronted with, what Christensen caged much later, disruptive change. Their taxonomy was based on the study of adaptive behavior on linear dynamical systems. This paper proposes a modification of the taxonomy on the basis of Synergetics to enable dealing with the nonlinear evolutionary dynamics of complex probabilistic business systems. Synergetics focuses on what happens in phase transitions or bifurcations which appear to be the essential nature of turbulent fields. Furthermore, Haken's slating principle and the concept of the order parameter are remarkably well-suited to review the Christensen's findings of companies held captive by customers and, particularly, the puzzling delay shown by leading companies in responding to newcomers. These newcomers typically change the nature of the order parameters of type 3 established fields, as represented by Christensen's product performance characteristics, which may cause customers to switch their preferences and buying behavior. Thus the apparent stability of an established field can be quite deceptive. As such, this paper suggests the existence of a lock-out principle complementary to the lock-in principle described by Arthur in his work.