The Adjacent Possible

The scientist Stuart Kauffman coined the suggestive name, “the adjacent possible”, for all those first-order prospects. The saying is intended to capture both the limits and the potential of innovation. In his 2010 Wall Street Journal article, ‘The Genius of the Tinkerer’, author Steven Johnson described Kauffman’s adjacent possible as “a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself”. Most advancement comes from small scholarly improvements based on experience and trial & error (i.e. the adjacent possible); not abrupt, sweeping, unexpected, revolutionary changes. The big and unexpected often come more by random chance. Penicillin and Sildenafil come to mind.