The field of giftedness and gifted education is about 100-years (plus/minus) old. Whether traced back to Stern or to Terman, or to anybody else, it has encompassed a millennium of thinking about and studying the intellectually gifted and educating them. In their centerpiece for this issue, Ziegler and Phillipson take these 100 years of research and practice and attempt to bring the field to a new level. This new level is distinct in its systems approach to the field--the point is not to focus exclusively or predominantly on an individual and his/her potential, trajectory, and products, but to refocus the field on the systemic context of giftedness. This new systems approach clearly brings many interesting topics to the discussion, some new and some old, but now organized in a complex structure. Thus, the concept of an actiotope, a component of the system that is potentiated with exceptionality, is a system itself. This "system-within-a-system" includes the action repertoire, goals, the environment, and subjective action space--all complex systemic structures on their own, which are introduced and described in detail by Ziegler and Phillipson. In this commentary, the author discusses what might be missing in this elegant and complex structure crafted by Ziegler and Phillipson. She explains the reasons why the consideration of perturbation in a systemic theory of giftedness is important. She suggests that for perturbation to be successful (i.e., transformative), a system has to have most (if not all) of its elements in place. In this sense--both the individual characteristics of a child and his or her educational pathway are necessary elements for preparing the system for a perturbation, giving it the capacity to transform and develop new points, and emerge in a light of excellence. (Contains 2 notes.)