Apex Preditor Theory

“During a period of stability any eco-system has an apex predator around which the eco-system organises… but when instability hits matters get problematic. The old ideas have reached maturity and the ecosystem is changing faster than can be understood or comprehended… At this point a low energy cost, adaptive entity can stabilise a new ecosystem, create a new way of thinking.” ~ http://cognitive-edge.com/blog/it-never-troubles-the-wolf-how-many-the-sheep-may-be/

As we move into the early majority stage of the life cycle of a product or an idea then there is a lot of diversity in the system, with interdependency. As the system matures that diversity starts to be reduced and as the idea reaches maturity diversity is minimal. That lack of diversity allows for new ideas to emerge in the fringe of the system (the early adopters). Initially dismissed and often contradictory one will emerge as the most flexible, adaptive to context and stables the next eco-system. So as the new apex predator establishes itself the variety is reduced and the distribution shifts from Pareto to Gaussian, things become more predicable. But as the system becomes increasingly homogenised the maverick ideas start to emerge left field. We then get a catalytic event which creates mass heterogeneity. Before and immediately after this we pay attention to the tails of distributions and we hit negative patterns early and fast – there is no predictability. ~ http://cognitive-edge.com/blog/integration-and-an-alarmist-implication/