News Archives

  • April, 2, 2025: Growth of Products and Services

    Peter Murmann writes: For two decades I wanted to get a good estimate of how the number of distinct products have grown in the economy. Once I thought I could simply use bar codes that have been attached to products for over decades but that tack proved a dead end. Today it asked two LLMs this question:  “Can you provide estimate of the total number of products and services that are offered all over the world.” Claude answered: “The count would certainly be in the billions and possibly reaching into the tens of billions when including every variant, regional offering, and service permutation available worldwide.” The Amazon marketplace according to Claude has 300 to 600 million products. ChatGPT 4o was much more conservative put the total number at 100 million products. It also produced this graph show that the number of products and services has been growing exponentially.

     

  • January 28, 2025: Richard Nelson died

    We are sad to announce that Richard R. Nelson has passed away. Here is an obituary that the International Schumpeter Society sent out.

  • May 24,2 2024: Very low chance firms to survive as independent entity

    One out of 22,222 firms listed on the stock market will survive as an independent entity for 100 years.

    Most firms (45%) disappear from the stock market because of mergers or acquisitions.
    Source: Daepp, M.I.G., Hamilton, M.J., West, G.B., Bettencourt, L.M.A. (2015) The mortality of companies. Journal of The Royal Society Interface 12, 20150120.

     

  • June 25, 2021: Nelson and Winter in Top 100 Economists

    Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter have been listed by the French Magazine Sciences Humaines among to top 100 economists of all time. You can read here (in French) how the magazine portrays Nelson and Winter’s intellectual contributions.  Nelson and Winter’s Ideas.  English translation

  • June 16, 2017: Oxford business history course

    Chris McKenna has shot a beautiful 5-min video introducing students what they will learn in a business history he runs at Oxford using Oxford and its environment as the material to be studied in the course. The chief assignment is to write a case that later can be used in class by other students. We highly recommend watching this video.

  • May 20, 2017: Sid Winter interview on new book “Innovation and the Evolution of Industries”

    Sid Winter talks with Knowledge@Wharton about his new book on “history friendly evolutionary models”, which he co-authored with Franco Malerba, Richard Nelson, and Luigo Orsenigo. The book deals with the interactions between innovation and industry evolution. Winter gives a quick introduction to evolutionary economics and the scientific value of history-friendly simulations models. Read the transcript or listen to podcast here.

  • April 4, 2017: The American Corporation

    Two important books on the American corporation have been written by Gerald Davis and Mark Mizruchi. They are reviewed by a very thoughtful essay by Braydon King in Contemporary Sociology and by Bruce Kogut in a shorter piece in ASQ.

  • February 17, 2017: MOR Special Issue on ‘The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Eco-system in India’

    This Management of Organization Review (MOR) special issue (edited by Suresh Bhagavatula, Ram Mudambi and Johann Peter Murmann) aims to explore the key features of the innovation and entrepreneurship eco-system in India. The objective of this Management and Organization Review (MOR) special issue is to explore the many dimensions of how the innovation and entrepreneurship eco-system of India. For details see,  Call for Papers.

  • January 31, 2016: The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert Gordon

    Robert Gordon has written an important new book in which is spells out his detailed arguments why he expects American economic growth never to reach the levels achieved before 1970. Here are links to useful reviews of the book:

    1. Economist  

    2. Paul Krugman in NY Times Magzine

  • Jan 20, 2016: 2nd MOR Frontier’s conference: Call for Proposals

    Building on the success of the first conference in Honk Kong, Management and Organization Review(MOR) will hold the 2nd frontier’s conference in Peking,China, October 5–7, 2016, and in Banglore, India, October 13–15, 2016. The theme of the conference is “The SME Ecology of Transforming Economies: Knowledge Creation, Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth.”  Panel Proposals are due March 31, 2016. For detail, see the Call For Proposals.

  • January 15, 2016: Call for Papers “Managing in the Age of Disruption”

    The Journal of Management is calling for contributions to a special issue on “Managing in the Age of Disruption” The editors are
    Shahzad (Shaz) Ansari, University of Cambridge, UK
    Raghu Garud, Pennsylvania State University, USA
    Arun Kumaraswamy, West Chester University of Pennsylvania, USA.

    Deadline for Submission: 16. December 2016.  Details

  • August 24, 2015:  Nathan Rosenberg Obituary by Joel Mokyr

    The economic history profession has lost one of its most original, creative, and wide-ranging minds in the passing of Nathan Rosenberg on Aug. 24, 2015. Rosenberg was one of the founding fathers of Cliometrics, a member of the first group of Cliometricians that with coining the term “congregated at Purdue University in the late 1960s, and which included other luminaries among them Lance Davis, Jonathan Hughes, and Stanley Reiter (who is widely credited Cliometrics”).

  • July 12, 2015 Special Issue on Deepening Links between Business History and Evolutionary Economics

    We reported earlier on a conference bringing together business historians and evolutionary economic in Dublin. A set of papers that have grown out of the conference are not appearing as a special issue in the journal “Business History.” The contributors are: Michael Jacobides, Franco Malerba & Luigi Orsenigo, Johann Peter Murmann, Richard Nelson Ray Stokes & Ralf Banken, Steven Toms, Nick Wilson & Mike Wright, and Jim Quinn.  You can find the papers and links for downloading here: Special Issue Papers

  • May 23, 2015. Sid Winter wins Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research

    Sid Winter just won the 2015 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research for “his deep empirical understanding of Schumpeterian processes of dynamic competition, generation of differential technological opportunities through appropriability conditions and the mechanisms driving dynamic capabilities in firms.” Full story. New: Winter’s Prize Lecture now available for download.

  • Feb 18, 2014:  Inaugural MOR Frontiers Conference in Hong Kong

    Management Organization Review has a new editor: Arie Lewin. Professor Lewin has many plans for taking the journal to the next level. One of them is to hold an annual conference to explore new ideas. MOR will hold its first Frontiers Conference “Globalization of Knowledge Creation and Innovation in the Context of Emerging Economies” in Honk Kong Dec 4-7, 20214. Here is the call for your participation.

  • June 20, 2013: Steve Klepper in Memoriam

    We are all very sad that Steve passed away (See CMU obituary). Seven Klepper supported one of the senior scholars supporting the creation of economic-eovlution.net from the very beginning. On March 23, there was at event as part of the 20th anniversary of the CCC to honor Steve. He was able to attend the day and you can watch the tributes that were made about it exemplary contributions. Honoring Steve Klepper Video. 

  • May 29, 2013: Announcing “Letters from China”

    Your editor is traveling to China. The goal of the visit is to get a deeper understanding of what the future of China will likely look like. More specifically, the purpose is to become more knowledgeable about whether China will become the world leader in high-tech industries and if so how.  Read his “Letters from China.”

  • Jan 22, 2013: Emerging Scholar Workshop: Evolutionary Perspectives on Strategic Management

    The Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the Wharton School will put on for the 2nd time a new week-long workshop for emerging scholars in the field. The workshop is designed for scholars ranging from students who are completing the second year of doctoral studies to those who have recently completed a doctorate. Participants will learn from leading scholars in the field.  The program will consist of a mix of seminar discussion and short presentations by participants reflecting their research interests and reactions to the seminar discussions. The program will begin on Sunday, June 23rd and end on Friday June 28th.  Each day will consist of a three hour workshop lead by an individual faculty member on the indicated theme, followed by broader group discussion. Deadline for application Feb 15, 2013. More details here.

  • September 8, 2012: History and Strategy

    The new volume of “Advances in Strategic Management” entitled “History and Strategy” is focused on bringing about stronger integration of history in strategy research. Edited by Steven Kahl, Brian Silverman, and Michael Cusumano, the book contains 10 articles that sketch how this deeper integration could come about. If you university library subscribes to Emerald, you can download the chapters from the Table of Contents.

  • May 15, 2012: Perspectives and Reflections on Nelson & Winter (1982)

    The 9th Atlanta Competitive Advantage Conference had a panel to celebrate the publication of Nelson and Winter’s 1982 landmark book. The panel included Sid Winter, Connie Helfat, L.G.Thomas III, and Johann Peter Murmann. The slides from the panelists are here: Helfat’s Presentation Slides
    Murmann’s Presentation Slides
    Thomas’s Presentation Slides

    From the vault:  Winter on Nelson (2000)
    Nelson on Winter (2003)

  • March 26, 2012: New Work on Coevolution

    Johann Peter Murmann has published an inductive case study entitled Coevolution of Industries and Important Features of Their Environments. Using a comparative historical method and drawing on evidence from five countries over a 60-year period, this paper spells out how coevolutionary processes work in shaping the evolution of industries and important features of their environments.Read the abstract and download paper here.

  • Jan 26, 2012 Emerging Scholar Workshop: Evolutionary Perspectives on Strategic Management

    The Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the Wharton School will put on a new week-long workshop for emerging scholars in the field. The workshop is designed for scholars ranging from students who are completing the second year of doctoral studies to those who have recently completed a doctorate. Participants will learn from leading scholars in the field.  The program will consist of a mix of seminar discussion and short presentations by participants reflecting their research interests and reactions to the seminar discussions. The program will begin on Sunday, June 24th and end on Friday June 29th.  Each day will consist of a three hour workshop lead by an individual faculty member on the indicated theme, followed by broader group discussion. Deadline for application Feb1, 2012. More details here.

  • Nov 14, 2011: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates retell the history of the PC industy

    In 2007, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates appeared for a joint interview at the Wall Street Journal “All Things Digital Conference.” The provide fascinating insights into the strategic thought of tow chief protagonists of the PC revolution in computing.  Watch them here.

  • August 20, 2011

    Evolutionists predict that firm failures rates are high. I have reported failure rates ranging from 61 to 88% for the synthetic dye industry in different countries (Murmann & Homburg, 2001). 75% percent of all new ventures are often reported without reference to the underlying data. Here is some data on venture backed firms, that means firms that are seen as very promising.
    A recent, large-scale study by William Sahlman, an advisor at several large venture capital firms and a Harvard Business School professor of Entrepreneurial Management, reveals that the failure rate of professional venture firms over the past 15 years has been around 60%, up from 35% in the 1980s. In other words, more high-potential ventures fail than succeed. The good news, says Sahlman, is that the economy and culture of the United States encourage entrepreneurial risk-taking. Failure doesn’t mean “Game over.” It means “Try again, with experience.”
    From Bigthink

  • December 28, 2010

    The product development at Saturday Night Life is perfectly consistent with the evolutionary predictions: Through out the week, that writing team comes up with about 800 jokes. On Friday night, they sit together and whittle it all the way down to the 100 jokes they like best, and out of that 100 the producer picks about 30. And out of that 30—- of the initial 800 jokes written during the week—- only about 16 or 20 jokes make it to a Saturday Night Live broadcast.

    • Page 1 of 3 pages  1 2 3 >

Other Archives