TheOtherYiCai's Profile

If you look at the case of Deere, their labor force grew along with their sales over 1910-1980, after which the number of workers began dropped despite continued sales growth. The company started moving to increased automation in their factories, which increased the productivity of their workers but led to a decline in the ratio of workers to output. In the frameworks of BSSE, only Deere’s initial tractor-powered machinery could be considered disruptive and market creating. Over time, their innovations became more and more sustaining in nature. It is difficult to point to the precise year when this transition from “disruptive” to “sustaining” happened, although I would guess it was closer to their early years (say, 1920-1940). It is probably accurate to say that manufacturing jobs were created during both the “disruptive” and “sustaining” phases of innovation at Deere (at least, until automation came online in the factories in the 1980s and beyond). Whether or not enough manufacturing jobs were created to offset the loss of jobs in the “disrupted” market, i.e., farm laborers, has been very difficult to determine precisely but my preliminary research suggests that it was not.