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 entrepreneur is the man who overcomes resistance.
The capitalist system is not a system of perfect competition, but a system of dynamic competition.
The entrepreneur is the man who creates new opportunities.
The capitalist process is a process of economic evolution.
The entrepreneur is the man who takes the initiative.
The capitalist system is not a system of equilibrium, but a system of disequilibrium.
The entrepreneur is the man who introduces novelty.
The capitalist process is a process of incessant change.
The capitalist system is not a system of stability, but a system of instability.
The entrepreneur is the man who creates new values.
The entrepreneur is the man who makes the economy grow.
The capitalist system is not a system of stagnation, but a system of progress.
The entrepreneur is the man who drives economic development.
I have always felt that the true task of the economist is to understand the process of economic change, not merely to describe static states.
Capitalism is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary.
The entrepreneur is the pivot on which everything turns.
I am not a socialist, but I believe that socialism will eventually triumph.
The capitalist process, by its very success, tends to undermine the social institutions which protect it.
The intellectual is a person who uses the mind for purposes other than those for which it was intended.
My life has been a series of intellectual adventures, some successful, some not.
Contemporaries of Joseph Schumpeter
Other Economicss born within 50 years of Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950).