SECURITY STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTER
Adaptive potential
“Adaptation energy is not a physical energy in the thermodynamic sense, but a conditional reserve that the organism possesses to fight stressors and maintain homeostasis.” H. Selye (1956)
We study adaptive potential as an internal integrative resource that determines the ability of socio-technical systems to change, adapt, and evolve under conditions of environmental instability and stochastic threats.
In a world of accelerating complexity, marked by deep interdependencies, pervasive uncertainty, and nonlinear risks, the question of survival and sustainable development for socio-technical systems transcends the traditional categories of protection, control, and stability. It requires a different perspective – one that turns attention inward, to the system’s own capacity for deliberate transformation while preserving coherence, functionality, and identity.
Adaptive potential denotes the aggregate of internal resources, organisational configurations, and cognitive mechanisms that enable a system to perceive change, respond to stressors, and restructure its behaviour and architecture under conditions of uncertainty.
This potential is neither a passive reserve nor an automatic by-product of flexibility. On the contrary, it requires intentional cultivation, strategic development, and scientifically grounded assessment. We regard adaptive potential as the foundational substrate of both resilience (recovery through adaptation) and transmorphance (evolution through structural reconfiguration).
In a world where the external environment cannot be controlled, and future scenarios, risks, and consequences cannot be reliably predicted, adaptive potential becomes the critical space within which governance, foresight, and purposeful action remain possible.
RESEARCH FOCUS
– Conceptualising adaptive potential within an interdisciplinary framework that integrates cybernetics, systems theory, physiology, behavioural economics, and the philosophy of governance;
– Developing indicators and methodologies for assessing the dynamics of adaptive potential in organisations, technological platforms, and institutional structures of varying complexity and maturity;
– Analysing the factors that either enhance or constrain the realisation of adaptive potential – including architectural limitations, resource deficits, institutional inertia, and psychological barriers;
– Constructing adaptometric models based on methods of correlation adaptometry, entropy–resource analysis, and information–dynamic diagnostics;
– Designing a practical framework that synthesises the most effective approaches to enhancing adaptive potential – applicable both to individuals operating under stress and to complex sociotechnical systems as a whole.