On the Origin of Evolvable Systems; Evolvability or Extinction

System evolvability is vital for the industry for the survival of complex systems. It is however difficult to achieve as this property is not well understood. Therefore there are no formal means of how to Design for Evolvability (DfE). Also there are no applicable ways of assessing evolvability, so it can not be proven whether a system or system design is more evolvable than another. This paper reviews previous research done concerning system evolvability, marking the field of our future research by proposing a reviewed definition of system evolvability and adding new concepts such as the key drivers of system evolvability. The objective is to find a means to steer the design process in a direction so that evolvability is designed into the system. System evolvability of complex systems is studied by using the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner developed by Philips Medical Systems as a study case