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Plants and small business firms face similar difficulties in their struggle for existence. Survival is most tenuous during the juvenile stages, seedlings and new businesses having the highest mortality rates. Successful establishment in either an ecological or a business community requires carving out a niche. Proliferation of a plant or business (the major strategy for ensuring persistence) depends on productivity which in turn depends on efficient acquisition and allocation of resources. A pattern of resource acquisition and allocation that is efficient in one climate may prove disastrous in another. Businesses must engage in long-term as well as short-term planning, and they base such planning on microeconomic theory; this theory has also provided insights into the responses of higher plants to different selective pressures., (Copyright © 1986. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)