Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Perspectives on Theories of Intellectual Property
- Part II Perspectives on the Problems of Anticommons and Patent Thickets
- Part III Perspectives on Finance and Commercialization
- 10 Patents as Options
- 11 Access to Finance and the Technological Innovation
- 12 The Decline of the Independent Inventor
- Part IV Perspectives on the University Innovation
- Part V Perspectives on International Considerations
- Index
- References
12 - The Decline of the Independent Inventor
A Schumpeterian Story?
from Part III - Perspectives on Finance and Commercialization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Perspectives on Theories of Intellectual Property
- Part II Perspectives on the Problems of Anticommons and Patent Thickets
- Part III Perspectives on Finance and Commercialization
- 10 Patents as Options
- 11 Access to Finance and the Technological Innovation
- 12 The Decline of the Independent Inventor
- Part IV Perspectives on the University Innovation
- Part V Perspectives on International Considerations
- Index
- References
Summary
The perfectly bureaucratized giant industrial unit not only ousts the small or medium-sized firm and “expropriates” its owners, but in the end it also ousts the entrepreneur and expropriates the bourgeoisie as a class which in the process stands to lose not only its income but also what is infinitely more important, its function. The true pacemakers of socialism were not the intellectuals or agitators who preached it but the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers.
Joseph A. SchumpeterFor Joseph Schumpeter, the heart of the capitalist system was the entrepreneur – an extraordinary individual who had the foresight to see profit in new products or production processes as well as the tenacity to overcome any obstacles that stood in the way. Schumpeter believed that the rise of large firms in the early 20th century was making the entrepreneur obsolete. By investing in in-house research and development (R&D) laboratories staffed by teams of engineers and scientists, large firms had routinized the process of innovation, “depersonalized and autonomatized” technological change, so that the incremental advances were realized “as a matter of course.” In such an environment not only did “personality and will power,” and thus the entrepreneur, “count for less,” but the greater efficiency of large-scale enterprises was undermining the small- and medium-size firms that historically had been the spawning ground for heroic innovators with radically new ideas about how to do things. These developments, Schumpeter foretold, would have profound consequences for the entire society. Because entrepreneurs were the primary political supports for “private property and free contracting,” their eclipse would pave the way for socialist revolution.
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- Perspectives on Commercializing Innovation , pp. 359 - 392Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011