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This paper suggests a class of stochastic collective learning processes exhibiting very irregular behavior. In particular, there are multimodal long run distributions. Some of these modes may vanish as the population size increases. This may bethought of as bubbles" persistent for a nite range of population sizes but disappearing in the limit. The limit distribution proves to bea discontinuous function of parameters determining the learning process. This gives rise to another type of bubbles": limit outcomes corresponding to small perturbations of parameters are di erent.Since an agent's decision rule involves imitation of the majority c hoice in a random sample of other members of the population, the resulting collective dynamics exhibit herding" or epidemic" features. JEL Classi cation: C72, C73, D83.

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Research on clusters highlights that some areas display superior conditions to locally nurture concentrations of businesses. But why do certain industries-despite ascribing their origin to specific locations-emerge away from their birthplace? We respond by qualitatively investigating the influence that the town of Arco, Italy, and its periodic event 'RockMaster' exerted on the emergence of the global sport climbing industry. We advance the concept of 'catalyzing places' that support the emergence and growth of industries through an ongoing, cyclical process of three forces-centripetal (i.e., attracting), catalyzing (i.e., reacting), and centrifugal (i.e., ejecting). The forces attract communities of practice to the place, expose them to intense, transformational experiences towards entrepreneurship, and ultimately induce them to establish their businesses elsewhere. By redeploying the resources and reputation acquired in the place, these scattered communities enact a collective phenomenon of user entrepreneurship, and ultimately industry emergence. We claim that the ongoing activities of the place, and the periodic ones of the event, are mutually reinforcing. We advance two novel elements, 'portable economies' and 'springboard firms,' which in catalyzing places exert the antithetical effect of 'agglomeration economies' and 'anchor firms' in clusters. We discuss our contribution to research on industry emergence, new practices, and user entrepreneurship.

One of the central concerns of the literature studying firms' growth is the need for understanding the rationale underlying the growth process from the company perspective. The appearance of novel patterns of firms' growth is linked to the emergence of new paradigms for the organization of industrial and manufacturing processes (that is, industrial revolution). The paper discusses evidence from a sample of fast-growing large companies taken from the Fortune 500 ranking. Results show patterns of firms' growth more in line with traditional sectors which are fuelled by scale and scope economies, and other patterns, observed more often in the case of high-tech "new economy" companies, which are instead mostly driven by network effects and platformization strategies. We label the latter phenomenon "metamorphosing", a pattern of growth characterized by a constant reshaping of horizontal and vertical boundaries by the firm which aims at taking advantage of market opportunities by exploiting its keystone position in platformbased business.