Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the Fifth Edition
- Abbreviations and Measures
- Part One. Principles and Concepts of Development
- Part Two. Poverty Alleviation and Income Distribution
- Part Three. Factors of Growth
- 8 Population and Development
- 9 Employment, Migration, and Urbanization
- 10 Education, Health, and Human Capital
- 11 Capital Formation, Investment Choice, Information Technology, and Technical Progress
- 12 Entrepreneurship, Organization, and Innovation
- 13 Is Economic Growth Sustainable? Natural Resources and the Environment
- Part Four. The Macroeconomics and International Economics of Development
- Part Five. Development Strategies
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- Endpapers
12 - Entrepreneurship, Organization, and Innovation
from Part Three. - Factors of Growth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the Fifth Edition
- Abbreviations and Measures
- Part One. Principles and Concepts of Development
- Part Two. Poverty Alleviation and Income Distribution
- Part Three. Factors of Growth
- 8 Population and Development
- 9 Employment, Migration, and Urbanization
- 10 Education, Health, and Human Capital
- 11 Capital Formation, Investment Choice, Information Technology, and Technical Progress
- 12 Entrepreneurship, Organization, and Innovation
- 13 Is Economic Growth Sustainable? Natural Resources and the Environment
- Part Four. The Macroeconomics and International Economics of Development
- Part Five. Development Strategies
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- Endpapers
Summary
Perhaps one day a saga will be written about the modern captain of industry. Perhaps, in the civilization that succeeds our own, a legend of the entrepreneur will be thumbed by antiquarians and told as a winter tale by the firelight, as today our sages assemble fragments of priestly mythologies from the Nile and as we tell to children of Jason's noble quest of the Golden Fleece. But what form such a legend may take it is not at all easy to foresee. The captain of industry may be cast in either of two roles: as the noble, daring, high-souled adventurer, sailing in the teeth of storm and danger to wrest from barbarism a prize to enrich his countrymen; or as a barbarous tyrant, guarding his treasure with cunning and laying snares to entrap Jason, who comes with the breath of a new civilization to challenge his power and possession (Dobb 1926:3).
The entrepreneur, with a dream and will to found a private kingdom, to conquer adversity, to achieve success for its own sake, and to experience the joy of creation, is a heroic figure in economic development, according to Joseph Schumpeter (1961:3) – sometime finance minister in an Austrian Socialist government and professor of economics in Bonn, Tokyo, and at Harvard. In a similar vein, David McClelland (1961) perceives the efforts of the entrepreneur, in controlling production in both capitalist and socialist economies, as largely responsible for rapid economic growth. For McClelland, the entrepreneur, driven by an inner urge to improve, is motivated by profits as a measure of achievement rather than as a source of enrichment.
Economic historians emphasize that such Schumpeterian captains of industry as John D. Rockefeller (oil), Andrew Carnegie (steel), Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroads), James B. Duke (tobacco and power), and Jay Gould and J. P. Morgan (finance) led the fifty-year economic expansion before World War I that made the United States the world's leading industrial nation. Rockefeller combined managerial genius, capacity for detail, decisiveness, frugality, and foresight with a ruthless suppression of competition, the use of espionage and violence to gain competitive advantages, and a general neglect of the public interest to become the symbol of the virtues and vices of these “robber barons” (Nash 1964:347–8).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Economic Development , pp. 383 - 403Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012