SCHUMPETER AND THE OBSOLESCENCE OF THE ENTREPRENEUR

This paper argues that the well-known “two Schumpeters” thesis, as understood in the Anglo-American literature on technological change, is clearly wrong. Equally wrong is the idea that the fundamentals of Schumpeter’s thought on entrepreneurship were influenced importantly by his observation of large firms in the United States after 1931. The obsolescence thesis speaks to a distinction between early capitalism and later capitalism, perhaps, but not to an earlier and later Schumpeter. A more important point is that the obsolescence thesis is wrong. It rests on a confusion – or perhaps a bait-and-switch – between two quite different kinds of economic knowledge.