TY  - JOUR
AU  - Darby,Michael R.
AU  - Zucker,Lynne G.
TI  - Growing by Leaps and Inches: Creative Destruction, Real Cost Reduction, and Inching Up
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8947
PY  - 2002
Y2  - May 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8947
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8947.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael R. Darby
John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management
University of California, Los Angeles
110 Westwood Plaza, Box 951481
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481
Tel: 310/825-4180
Fax: 310/454-2748
E-Mail: michael.r.darby@anderson.ucla.edu

Lynne G. Zucker
Departments of Sociology & Public Policy
UCLA
Box 951551
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551
Tel: 310/825-9155
Fax: 310/454-2748
E-Mail: zucker@ucla.edu
AB  - 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.
ER  -