  The stability of a complex system generally decreases with increasing system
size and interconnectivity, a counterintuitive result of widespread importance
across the physical, life, and social sciences. Despite recent interest in the
relationship between system properties and stability, the effect of variation
in response rate across system components remains unconsidered. Here I vary the
component response rates ($\boldsymbol{\gamma}$) of randomly generated complex
systems. I use numerical simulations to show that when component response rates
vary, the potential for system stability increases. These results are robust to
common network structures, including small-world and scale-free networks, and
cascade food webs. Variation in $\boldsymbol{\gamma}$ is especially important
for stability in highly complex systems, in which the probability of stability
would otherwise be negligible. At such extremes of simulated system complexity,
the largest stable complex systems would be unstable if not for variation in
$\boldsymbol{\gamma}$. My results therefore reveal a previously unconsidered
aspect of system stability that is likely to be pervasive across all realistic
complex systems.
