Joseph Schumpeter
Creative destruction, entrepreneurship theory
Most quoted
"In capitalist reality as distinct from its textbook picture, it is not that kind of competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives."
— from Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942
"The function of the entrepreneur is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on."
— from The Theory of Economic Development, 1934
"The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."
— from Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942
All quotes by Joseph Schumpeter (318)
The problem is not how to get good people to pass good laws, but how to get people to pass good laws when they are not good.
Capitalism is a system that destroys the old and creates the new, and it is this process of creative destruction that makes it so dynamic.
Socialism is not a system of production, but a system of distribution.
The stock market is a voting machine, not a weighing machine.
To realize the nature of the economic process, it is necessary to realize that it is a process of incessant change.
The capitalist process, by substituting a mere parcel of shares for the walls of the factory, has not only changed the mentality of the entrepreneurs but also that of the owners.
Economic analysis is not a branch of mathematics, but a branch of history.
The first task of the economist is to understand what is, not to prescribe what ought to be.
The history of capitalism is the history of creative destruction.
The perfect competition of the textbooks is a static concept, and therefore useless for understanding the dynamics of capitalism.
The entrepreneur is the man who sees an opportunity and takes it.
The problem with socialism is that it tries to make everyone equal, but it only succeeds in making everyone equally poor.
The economic process is a process of incessant change.
The capitalist system is not a stationary process, but an evolutionary one.
The entrepreneur is essentially a man who does things, not a man who thinks about things.
The capitalist system is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary.
The economic process is a process of incessant revolutionizing of the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.
The history of capitalism is a history of innovation.
The economic process is a process of incessant change, and it is this change that makes it so dynamic.
The capitalist system is not only a system of production, but also a system of distribution.
Contemporaries of Joseph Schumpeter
Other Economicss born within 50 years of Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950).