Survival of the flexible: explaining the dominance of meta-heuristics within a rapidly evolving world

Although researchers often discuss the rising popularity of nature-inspired meta-heuristics (NIM), there has been a paucity of data to directly support the notion that NIM are growing in prominence compared to other optimization techniques. Here we provide the first evidence that NIM usage is not only growing, but indeed appears to have surpassed mathematical optimization techniques (MOT) in several important metrics related to academic research activity (publication frequency) and commercial activity (patenting frequency). Motivated by these findings, this paper aims to review and discuss the origins of this growing NIM dominance. We review explanations for NIM popularity and discuss why some of these arguments remain unsatisfying. We argue that a compelling and comprehensive explanation should directly account for the manner in which most NIM success has actually been achieved, e.g. through hybridization and customization to different problem environments. By taking a problem lifecycle perspective, this paper explores and expands upon the hypothesis that nature-inspired meta-heuristics derive much of their utility from being flexible. This flexibility is well-known and empirically supported by evidence that NIM are readily adapted to a problem environment and can integrate domain knowledge. We discuss global trends within the business environments where optimization algorithms are applied and we speculate that highly flexible algorithm frameworks will become increasingly popular within our diverse and rapidly changing world.