Growing by Leaps and Inches: Creative Destruction, Real Cost Reduction, and Inching Up

Michael Darby () and Lynne Zucker ()

No 8947, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Most firms achieve perfective progress, incrementally improving commodities or productivity. But technological progress is concentrated in a few firms achieving metamorphic progress: forming or transforming industries with technological breakthroughs (e.g., biotechnology, lasers, semiconductors, nanotechnology). Unless congruent with incumbents' science and technology base, metamorphic progress promotes entry. Scientific breakthroughs embodied in discovering scientists, protected by natural excludability, and transferred by learning-by-doing-with at the bench generally drive metamorphic progress. Embodied knowledge is rivalrous and leads to entry and industry dominance by star-scientist-linked firms. Incorporating this scientific-entrepreneurial process is essential to improving - if not transforming - endogenous growth models.

JEL-codes: L11 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-ent
Note: PR
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published as Darby, Michael R. and Lynne G. Zucker. "Growing By Leaps And Inches: Creative Destruction, Real Cost Reduction, And Inching Up," Economic Inquiry, January 2003, 41(1): 1-19.
Published as • Reprinted in Michael R. Darby & Lynne G. Zucker, 2003. "Growing by leaps and inches: creative destruction, real cost reduction, and inching up," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Sep, pages 13-42.

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Journal Article: Growing by leaps and inches: creative destruction, real cost reduction, and inching up (2003)
Journal Article: Growing by Leaps and Inches: Creative Destruction, Real Cost Reduction, and Inching Up (2003)
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