Chapter 7 Experts and Entrepreneurs

This chapter conceptualizes the Kirznerian entrepreneur as performing a unique and crucial role of driving an open-ended market process. Entrepreneurial alertness is a theoretical concept that occurs prior to choice and consists of changing perceptions of prices and real resource constraints. This chapter emphasizes the role of subjective perception in both arbitraging and innovative entrepreneurship and develops a simple matrix to synthesize these dual roles. This unique epistemic position in the market process qualifies both the arbitraging and innovative entrepreneur as capable of performing functions that are nonreplicable by experts outside the system.