we find that the star firms whose returns are diverging from the rest of the firms are in industries that require high cognitive skills and that in these industries average returns are higher. In industries where the tasks involve routine manual skills and which score low on non-routine cognitive and complex problem solving skills, we see lower returns and don’t see the star firms pulling away from the rest.

That is from Meghana Ayyagari, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, and Vojislav Maksimovic. Pointer from Tyler Cowen.

No surprise, of course. My intuition for quite a while has been that star firms are those that manage the task of software development and business strategy in the age of the Internet particularly well.