It reflects a modern concern to establish a more systematic understanding of the process of creative destruction

Growth Curves and Ecological Niche Theory
13A major weakness of many of the empirical studies of modern industrial growth, including those of Kuznets and Burns, is that they are essential curve fitting exercises without a clearly articulated theoretical basis in the three mechanisms outlined above. At best, they establish important regularities in growth behaviour and provide a potential basis for trend forecasting. Moreover, no single growth curve is necessarily to be preferred to any other, and there are a wide variety of such curves available (Tingyan, 1990). Indeed, the same data may predict widely different evolutionary patterns for an industry depending on the “curve” that is fitted (Mills, 1955). In fact, there is a fundamental difficulty behind any growth curve fitting exercise, namely that observed growth is a joint outcome of a dynamic process and possible changes in the conditions determining that dynamic process. What is observed in fact is an envelope of a sequence of growth curves each one contingent on given and different parameter values (Metcalfe and Cameron, 1988). Thus, for example, a logistic process may drive the dynamics of a given industry, without the outcome being a logistic curve to describe the trend path of output. Since the secular time trend, of itself, does not establish the properties of the underlying processes, there is no point quibbling over the merits of alternative growth curves unless one also has a clearly articulated theory of changes in the parameters of the growth process. [12][12]For a valuable discussion of the competing alternatives, see…
14Some help in these matters is provided by ecological theory. In seeking to explain the changing balance between different species in the natural world, ecologists have developed the concept of the niche, a limiting space within which a given organism can survive, together with a dynamic account of how this space is filled. The development of this apparatus need not concern us here; suffice it to say that it involves a distinction between the carrying capacity of the niche for a species (K) and the intrinsic rate of increase of the species in an unlimited environment (r). What is interesting for us is that the origins of this approach are also to be found in the 1920s and 1930s. The ideas, which were in the air at exactly the time that Kuznets and Burns formulated their theories of industrial growth, are, to all intents and purposes, sophisticated yet unintended economic versions of r ? K theory. The niche is the analogue to the long run size of the market, as determined by conditions of demand and cost, and the intrinsic rate of increase reflects the dynamics of consumer learning, accumulation and technical progress. To explore this claim further we need a more explicit formulation of the foundations of the industrial growth curve.
15In the following analysis, we have settled on the Gompertz process, largely because of its convenient properties in explicating the role of key economic elasticities and incorporating time dependent changes in the environment of the industry, particularly technical progress. [13][13]In previous papers, Metcalfe (1981) and Metcalfe and Cameron… To remind the reader, the Gompertz curve, the integral of the Gompertz process, is an asymmetric sigmoid curve with an inflexion point at approximately 37 per cent of the carrying capacity or long run value of the dependent variable. [14][14]Cf. Windsor (1932), Prescott (1922) and Peabody (1924) for…