The second is the era of technological transfer from one region or society to others, for example, the dissemination of Edison's electric system from New York City to London and Berlin.
The development of technological systems is therefore reliant on reciprocated and interdependent cause and effect processes amongst social and technical components.
Subsequently, a sub-system which evolves at a sufficient pace contributes positively to the collective development, while one which does not prevents the system from achieving its targeted goals.
In turn, the reverse salient hampers the progress or prevents the fulfillment of potential development of the collective system.
The reverse salient denotes a focusing device, in the words of Nathan Rosenberg,[6] for technological system stakeholders, which strive to remove it through innovation.
Subsequently, reverse salients may be more applicable in certain contexts to denote system performance hindrance than similar or overlapping concepts such as bottleneck and technological imbalance or disequilibrium.
In order to supply electricity within a defined region of distribution, sub-systems such as the direct current generator were identified as reverse salients and corrected.
The most notable limitation of the direct-current system was, however, its low voltage transmission distance, and the resulting cost of distributing electricity beyond a certain range.
To reduce costs, Edison introduced a three-wire system to replace the previously installed two-wire alternative and trialed different configuration of generators, as well as the usage of storage batteries.
Notwithstanding its importance, the literature studying technological system evolution has remained limited in terms of analytical tools that measure the state of reverse salience.