What happens when the very innovations that propel a system to greatness become the instruments of its undoing? When does ingenuity itself turn against the structures it helped create?

Picture breakthrough institutional technologies - mechanisms so powerful they reshape entire regions, so effective they seem unshakeable. These innovations don't just solve immediate problems; they create new realities, new possibilities, new ways of organizing human potential. But what occurs when such systems encounter the limits of their own success?

Consider how scaling transforms everything. The very mechanisms that enable growth can become points of strain. The innovations that bring triumph can carry within them the seeds of their own reversal. How do we measure when such systems truly reach their breaking point?

Think about the challenge of identifying true endpoints in complex innovation networks. When foundational breakthroughs outlive their original frameworks, when core innovations persist through institutional upheaval, how do we determine what constitutes collapse?

What patterns emerge when institutional technologies face overwhelming expansion? How do breakthrough models handle the stresses of their own achievement? And perhaps most intriguingly—which innovations survive when their parent systems fracture?

These questions become particularly acute during those pivotal moments when established systems face their greatest tests. The relationship between innovation success and systemic strain reveals itself most clearly during such periods of institutional stress.

Join Ash Stuart as he reveals how the march of ingenuity can become a painful reversal, and why understanding system overreach matters more than we might imagine.

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