Entrepreneurs and Organisation

I. Routines and Experiments Though at least as old as The Wealth of Nations, the concept of the market as an experimental mechanism finds no place in standard modern theory; it is nevertheless implicit in the “appreciative theory” by which the relative merits of markets and central planning are commonly appraised. The outstanding analyst of the experimental process and its implications is Joseph Schumpeter; and the fiftieth anniversary of the publication in English of his Theory of Economic Development (the original German version of which appeared in 1911) provides a convenient opportunity for some comment on his work. What makes this opportunity particularly timely is the citation of Schumpeter by Nelson and Winter as one of the two primary intellectual pro‐genitors of their own Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change.