For this week's HGTE, view the Live Lesson short clip and read the short excerpt from Joseph Schumpeter.
TranscriptLinks to an external site.
"Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy are much more than a prognosis of capitalism's future. It is also a sparkling defense of capitalism on the grounds that capitalism sparks entrepreneurship. Indeed, Schumpeter was among the first to lay out a clear concept of entrepreneurship. He distinguished inventions from the entrepreneur's innovations. Schumpeter pointed out that entrepreneurs innovate not just by figuring out how to use inventions but also by introducing new means of production, new products, and new forms of organization. These innovations, he argued, take just as much skill and daring as does the process of invention."
—Joseph Schumpeter
"Innovation by the Entrepreneur" argued Schumpeter, leads to gales of "creative destruction" as innovations cause old inventories, ideas, technologies, skills, and equipment to become obsolete. The question is not "how capitalism administers existing structures,…[but] how it creates and destroys them." This creative destruction, he believed, causes continuous progress and improves the standards of living for everyone." Joseph Alois Schumpeter, 1883-1950Links to an external site.
In terms a little more modern than Shumpater's, Dr. Abhijeett Desai explains that the predominant form of innovation can look disruptive, but is, in fact, transformational innovation. Explore Dr. Desai's thinking in Transformative Innovations vs. Disruptive InnovationLinks to an external site..
Address the following statement in a 1-page (minimum) paper:
- Identify at least one recent innovation in any industry and explain if that innovation was disruptive (per the definition Jon gives) or transformational.