SCHUMPETER ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The English translation of Schumpeter’s essay on entrepreneurship, written around the time when he prepared the second edition of Theorie der Wirtschaftlichen Enwicklung (1926), from which the English translation The Theory of Economic Development (1934) was made, contains many of the ideas found in The Theory of Economic Development and in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942). Since the essay, “Entrepreneur” (1928) is relatively short, yet contains most of the central ideas developed in his later works, the essay can be regarded as a blueprint for his life’s work. The task of evaluating the significance and the value of the translation in addressing the questions of whether or not, and the extent to which, Schumpeter had changed his ideas on entrepreneurship since the first edition of Theorie (1912), however, falls on Schumpeter scholars (e.g. Elliott, 1983; Shionoya, 1997). My comment here, instead, will be limited to Schumpeter’s concept of entrepreneurship as stated in the essay.