Designing techniques for systemic impact: lessons from C-K theory and matroid structures

As underlined in Arthur " s book " the nature of technology " we are very knowledgeable on the design of objects, services or technical systems, but we don " t know much on the dynamics of technologies. Still contemporary innovation often consists in designing techniques with systemic impact. They are pervasive– both invasive and perturbing-, they recompose the family of techniques. Can we model the impact and the design of such techniques? More specifically: how can one design generic technology, ie a single technology that provokes a complete reordering of families of techniques? Recent advances in design theories open new possibilities to answer these questions. In this paper we use C-K design theory and a matroid-based model of the set of techniques to propose a new model (C-K/Ma) of the dynamics of techniques, accounting for the design of generic technologies. We show: F1: C-K/Ma offers a computational model for designing a technique with systemic impact. This model sheds new light on the logics of combination in design – the model helps to identify four logics of " combinations " , from non-generative combinatorics to generative one.