Möller Martin, Speck Olga, Thekkepat Harishankar, Speck Thomas
Cluster of Excellence livMatS @ FIT-Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies, University of Freiburg, Georges-Köhler-Allee 105, 79110 Freiburg, Germany.
Öko-Institut Consult GmbH, Merzhauser Str. 173, 79100 Freiburg, Germany.
Biomimetics (Basel). 2025 Jun 16;10(6):406. doi: 10.3390/biomimetics10060406.
With environmental challenges intensifying, a fundamental understanding and sustainable management of ongoing transition processes are crucial. Biological evolution provides valuable lessons on how to adapt and thrive under changing conditions. By studying its key principles, we identified analogies between biological evolution and technological transitions in terms of both the Multi-Level Perceptive and the path dependency model. The comparative study also revealed that, despite contrasting time scales, the generation-based and version-based developments are comparable. In addition, interesting similarities were found in the increase and decrease of variety and between fitness and consistency. The lessons learned from biology include "Give it a try", "Do not close for reconstruction", and "Keep older versions in the innovation process". Based on this comparison, we aim to gain insights for a better understanding of how to manage technology transitions and to derive concrete indicators for assessing and monitoring them. In doing so, we can provide action-oriented guidance for developing more sustainable technological solutions for major ongoing transitions, such as the energy transition.
随着环境挑战日益加剧，对当前转型过程的基本理解和可持续管理至关重要。生物进化为如何在不断变化的条件下适应和繁荣提供了宝贵的经验教训。通过研究其关键原则，我们在多层次感知和路径依赖模型方面确定了生物进化与技术转型之间的相似之处。比较研究还表明，尽管时间尺度不同，但基于代际和基于版本的发展具有可比性。此外，在多样性的增减以及适应性和一致性之间发现了有趣的相似之处。从生物学中学到的经验教训包括“试一试”、“不要为了重建而关闭”以及“在创新过程中保留旧版本”。基于这种比较，我们旨在获得深刻见解，以便更好地理解如何管理技术转型，并得出评估和监测它们的具体指标。通过这样做，我们可以为为诸如能源转型等重大正在进行的转型开发更可持续的技术解决方案提供面向行动的指导。
