DISTRIBUTION OF GROWTH-RATES IN HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL SWEDISH TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS

This study concerns gestation times (time between patent application a nd market introduction) and post-market introduction growth rates of 9 0 highly successful Swedish technical innovations. Innovations in smal l firms (1-49 employees) are characterized by short gestation times an d high growth rates. Those in medium-sized firms (50-499 employees) sh ow intermediate gestation times and relatively low growth rates. Innov ations in large firms belong to the Wallenberg sphere of influence sho w long gestation times and high growth rates (an unexpected result), i n contrast to those in other large Swedish firms, which are characteri zed by intermediate gestation times and relatively low growth rates. T he assumption that the distribution of innovation growth rates in all the firms can be interpreted as being log normal with a Pareto inverse power tail for the very high growth rates is compatible with the data . Innovations in the small firms and in the Wallenberg firms are overr epresented in the Pareto inverse power tail portion of the distributio n. These results are both unexpected and significant.