Schumpeter's plea
Subtitle: rediscovering history and relevance in the study of entrepreneurship
By: Geoffrey Jones, R. Daniel Wadhwani
Series: Working paper / Division of Research, Harvard Business School -- 06-036; Working paper (Harvard Business School. Division of Research) -- 06-036
Publisher: Division of Research, Harvard Business School
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 38
Description: Joseph Schumpeter believed that history was essential to the study of entrepreneurship. It is a perspective that has been lost in recent scholarship. This paper shows why this has been detrimental to the field, and explores how the current situation can be improved. We begin by surveying the development of the social scientific literature on entrepreneurship since the field first emerged as an area of academic interest in the 1940s. We show that, despite theoretical agreement on the importance of context in the study of entrepreneurship, empirical research in recent years has ignored historical setting in favor of focusing on entrepreneurial behavior and cognition. The result has been a pre-occupation with high-tech start-ups in the United States, and growing irrelevance from the major issues in the contemporary global economy. The paper outlines ways in which the rediscovery of history can facilitate entrepreneurial studies, using examples from international entrepreneurship. We conclude by arguing that these methods can stimulate the kind of exchanges between the history and theory of entrepreneurship that Schumpeter envisioned.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.