AbstractUsing the organisational developments of the Fraunhofer Society and the growth process of new telecommunications services in West Germany as examples, the continuity and discontinuity of social processes are investigated using the concepts of path-dependency and critical mass. In both cases, as soon as the network exceeded a critical threshold the growth became self stimulating. However, they also show how, in the initial phases, critical decisions, historical accidents, exogenous shocks and situational coincidences may channel a development in a certain pathway.