for many years. Eventually, the growth rate of a single-innovation,
ambitious firm will decline as the effects of the innovation gradually wear
out and new entrepreneurs enter with their own innovations.

Third, the image of the "miracle" firm that grows to hundreds of
millions of dollars in revenues only two or three years after start-up is the
rare exception, not the rule. The process of creative destruction is not
instantaneous. It takes time for innovations to acquire market share and
work their way through the entire world economy. Ambitious firms
exploit this as an opportunity that provides growth for many years.
Glamorous firms exploit this as a source of steady income used to
support the development of additional innovations.

Fourth, it is widely believed that all highly innovative firms are
destined for high growth. This is not true. Some firms/entrepreneurs
simply are unwilling or unable to obtain the resources they need for
achieving growth. In fact, it is my estimate that the unwilling exceed the
unable, but no entrepreneur will admit to being unwilling. Still, my
experience is that the largest percentage of constrained growth firms are
self-constrained.

So much for the myths of entrepreneurship. The next two chapters will
lay the foundation for understanding the massive problems of data
collection and dynamic analysis that plague the application of this
dynamic capitalism typology to the real world of American businesses. If
you think this will be boring, skip on to Chapter 7, which takes up the
analysis of the data to determine the extent of economic core, ambitious,
constrained growth, and glamorous firms in the U.S. economy.
However, you may find it necessary to return to and read Chapters 5 and
6 later since data availability and analysis are integral to theory
development.

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