Linking Increasing Returns to Industry-Level Change

In recent years anomalies to the punctuated equilibrium paradigm have appeared in the literature in the form of continuous change and hypercompetition. Nine industry case studies were developed to provide datasets for a longitudinal study. A GLM was used to test whether increasing returns in an industry's output influences that industry's frequency of change and the discontinuity types experienced, as an explanator for the anomalies. Industries with increasing returns were found to experience greater frequency of change than industries without increasing returns but no reliable evidence was found of a correlation between increasing returns and the discontinuity types experienced. In addition, change was found to increase frequency of change and had some influence on type of further change experienced, providing evidence that frequency of change varies over time.