Exaptation and emerging degeneracy in innovation processes

In socio-economic innovation processes, exaptations emerge from processes through which an initial attribution of new functionalities to existing artifacts or organizations leads to new artifacts and eventually to new markets. In this paper, I argue that exaptation may generate degeneracy, defined as the property according to which structurally different elements provide overlapping functionalities. I propose a theoretical framework to analyze exaptation–degeneracy processes and use two case studies to show that exaptation can generate new artifacts providing functionalities similar to those provided by existing structurally different ones. This paper is intended to provide a contribution to an exaptation–degeneracy perspective in innovation theory