Understanding change better


The COVID-19 crisis gives a taste of the disruption that can be expected as environmental change impacts path-dependent sectors. The current pandemic is an ‘expected surprise,’ likely born of increased biodiversity loss, illegal wildlife trade and fragmentation and encroachment on natural habitat. It is also, in part, the product of growing population densities and vulnerabilities of health systems. This pandemic is also exacerbating pre-existing inequalities such as gender inequality. Research into resilience and transitions shows that path-dependent sectors adapt in the short term by improving their efficiency but, as a result, decrease their diversity and long-term adaptive capacities. As the world changes, more pressure is put on these sectors and the actors operating within them. However, the current focus on ‘managed’ improvement can blind one to broader systemic risks. This logic is well known to transition researchers. Social and economic systems based on such path dependencies are vulnerable to disruption.


COVID-19 showed how such disruptions can have global impacts while creating space for transformative change previously thought unimaginable. Patterns of transformative change in economic sectors and regions yield societal transitions: a non-linear shift away from one type of path-dependency, triggered by crises and events that catalyse and accelerate reorganization of complex social systems. [20],[22]


Such transitions have


happened throughout history and offer a way to understand the patterns and mechanisms driving transformative change today.


Transformative change has often been driven by technological change, as in the shift from horses to cars, from coal to gas, from sail power to steamships or from letters to e-mail. Sometimes institutional and economic change drives the transition, leading to societal shifts from extensive to intensive food production systems or from neighborhood to specialized health care, or from landfilling waste to incineration. Such transformations can take decades, but usually 10-15 years of disruptive and chaotic structural change plays out before a new normal is reached.[23]


(Figure 4)


Figure 4: How transformative change is always about build-up and break-down


Optimizations Destabilizations Institutionalizations Disruption Stabilizations


Emergence Breakdown Acceleration Experimentation Phase out


13 Adapt to Survive: Business transformation in a time of uncertainty


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