Consider the origin of the term "revolution". As far as I know, the earliest use of the term, contemporary with the thinking that led to the French Revolution, is in the phrase "Copernican revolution". Something of a play on words, perhaps.
"Paradigm shift" has become known as over-used management jargon, probably now long out of fashion. It entered the business vocabulary likely from its use to describe the transition from procedural to Object-Oriented styles of computer programming in the late 80s and early 90s. But well before that it described the change from the Ptolemaic geocentric system to the Copernican solar system.
However, "revolution" has come to be associated with the French Revolution, the founding of the first French republic. The decapitation of a regime, a transformation of the ruling class. There are two problems I see with this approach to reform.
The first is that either the replacement is only of the top-most tiers, perhaps just a few core leaders as in the case of Egypt recently, or the Aristocracy in the case of France. Or the replacement is wholesale, as in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The former leaves the system in place as the only source of stability and is prone to lead to a structurally similar society, as happened with Emperor Napoleon, the latter leads to the destruction of the society by the removal of the large majority of the most capable members. Although it is right that the law should treat them as such, it has been shown that not all are created equal.
The second is that the disorder created by a revolution creates a situation where the rule of law is weakened. Might makes right becomes the de facto law. If you believe that the demos (by which I mean the common interest, rather than popular opinion) is inherently more powerful in all ways than any other faction, or that law is never made such that it favours the people, perhaps you see this as desirable.
I see it more that the demos is a force within the society. It is effective in some ways, weak in others. There are and must be-- the alternative being societal destruction-- other groups that perceive themselves as having other interests within society. Professionals or artisans (state-funded or private); owners of the means of production, large or small (+); the standing military; the financier classes; the media classes; the more literate and intelligent and others. Of course, these groups overlap greatly, but some people are more a member of some groups than others. Many people identify with one group whilst their interests as created by their situation are actually those of one or several others. Corporations are very effective as institutions that create this situation, be it through direct share-holding, pensions or the general belief that their financial success is identical with the situations we all inhabit. They are also only one of many possible forms these necessary components can take.
These groups have strengths and weaknesses also. In particular, large businesses are almost always, by necessity, highly organised and ready to take advantage of an opportunity. In certain contexts this is a very good thing. However, in the context of the control of a society as a whole, it is typically disastrous. In fact it has been in all cases I know of. These entities are currently controlled by people who fervently follow and proselytize an ideology that leads them to the survival strategy of the tape-worm: perfect self-interest and the seeking of maximised profits, as they often proudly declare. For surely there can be no greater profit margin, no more personally beneficial situation than a return on an investment of nothing?
Yet revolution creates such opportunity.
Further, it does not completely alter popular opinion and culture, which are deeply shaped by the prevailing institutions and those previously dominant, be it slavery, the British Empire, Roman Catholicism or the New Deal. Russian thought is still influenced by the communist era. French thought was still influenced by the age of Aristocracy. Religion persisted in the Communist states. What remains is not just the institutions or even their structure replicated in similar ones renamed. It is also the inertial effect of cultural transmission; belief systems that exist independently of the institutions that created them.
(+) which may at present be subject to labor laws or circumventing them via the national borders. We might question whether this is inevitable.