Adding additional complexity will then impose growing burdens on those societies, making them more vulnerable to external threats.
The concept is credited to Joseph Tainter, who argued that ancients civilisations collapsed because they encountered diminishing marginal returns on complexity.
Although Tainter's original work was mainly concerned with ancient civilisations, he and others have subsequently researched what they term the diminishing marginal returns on innovation.
[6] Dekker shows how the growing complexity of economic systems makes them more vulnerable to breakdown.
Melia[5] points to evidence of declining satisfaction with the customer services of large organisations, particularly in the handling of complaints.