SCHUMPETER’S “ENTREPRENEUR” AND WHY WE NEED ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY

Let me start by thanking Markus Becker and Thorbjørn Knudsen for making this important article available to us all and for providing such a careful translation. “Entrepreneur” is a central piece in Schumpeter’s production, and it is a sad fact that it has not been available in English till now. This article, to be more precise, is one of Schumpeter’s key writings on entrepreneurship. It is only rivaled, in this respect, by Chapter 2 in Theory of Economic Development (1911, 1926, 1934), some passages in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), and a few articles from the late 1940s. The sections on entrepreneurship in the two books I just mentioned are subordinate to the wider themes of these books and integrated into these; and the articles from the late 1940s represent primarily an attempt from Schumpeter’s side to forge a union between the economic theory of entrepreneurship and the economic history of entrepreneurship. When it comes to a single, comprehensive work that is exclusively devoted to entrepreneurship, “Entrepreneur” is unique and alone.