Background · Social Innovation

Complex systems change

Westley and Antadze's 2010 approach to how a small-scale initiative can — through the dynamics of complex adaptive systems — become the catalyst of systems-level change.

Living Lab editorial team Knowledge Base · Social Innovation

3 min read 2026

Westley and Antadze (2010) interpret social innovation through the dynamics of complex adaptive systems: using the tools of systems science and social theory, they describe how a new solution can, over the longer term, become the catalyst of systems-level change.

1. Social innovation as a complex adaptive system

The starting point of the approach is that social innovation is not a linear but an emergent process. A new solution — for example a local community experiment — does not take effect on its own, in a single step, but through the dynamics of the system. Over time, small-scale initiatives and experiments transform social structures through self-organisation and feedback loops.

To capture this, the authors draw on concepts from systems science and social theory. Within this framework, change cannot be planned in a straight line: it unfolds from the way many small initiatives interact with one another.

2. Scaling out and scaling deep

Westley and Antadze describe one of the key phenomena of the process as “scaling deep”. The quantitative spread of innovations (scaling out) — that is, their appearance in more and more places — is not enough; their qualitative embedding is at least as important. This embedding takes place at the level of values, beliefs and institutional practices.

The point of the distinction is that real change does not depend merely on a spread measurable in numbers, but on how deeply the new solution becomes rooted in the thinking and functioning of the community.

3. Multi-level relationships and systems-level impact

According to the authors, genuine systems-level change requires a multi-level system of relationships that connects individual initiatives, community learning and political-institutional decision-making. This perspective also had a strong influence on resilience-based approaches to social innovation.

The approach has been adopted by the innovation guidelines of the OECD, the EU and the UN as well, as one of the foundations of the “systemic social innovation” paradigm.

Key takeaways

Social innovation is an emergent, non-linear process: small initiatives transform structures through self-organisation and feedback loops.
“Scaling deep” — embedding at the level of values, beliefs and institutional practices — is at least as important as quantitative spread (scaling out).
Systems-level change requires a multi-level system of relationships that connects the individual, the community and the institutional-political levels.

Series · Social Innovation (10 parts)