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Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.122092
EAN: 9780674025233
ISBN: 0674025237
Label: Belknap Press
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 736
Publication Date: April 30, 2007
Publisher: Belknap Press
Studio: Belknap Press
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Editorial Review: Listen to a short interview with Thomas McCraw
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane Pan Am, Gimbel's, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland--all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is the price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. "Creative destruction," he said, is the driving force of capitalism. Described by John Kenneth Galbraith as "the most sophisticated conservative" of the twentieth century, Schumpeter made his mark as the prophet of incessant change. His vision was stark: Nearly all businesses fail, victims of innovation by their competitors. Businesspeople ignore this lesson at their peril--to survive, they must be entrepreneurial and think strategically. Yet in Schumpeter's view, the general prosperity produced by the "capitalist engine" far outweighs the wreckage it leaves behind. During a tumultuous life spanning two world wars, the Great Depression, and the early Cold War, Schumpeter reinvented himself many times. From boy wonder in turn-of-the-century Vienna to captivating Harvard professor, he was stalked by tragedy and haunted by the specter of his rival, John Maynard Keynes. By 1983--the centennial of the birth of both men--Forbes christened Schumpeter, not Keynes, the best navigator through the turbulent seas of globalization. Time has proved that assessment accurate. Prophet of Innovation is also the private story of a man rescued repeatedly by women who loved him and put his well-being above their own. Without them, he would likely have perished, so fierce were the conflicts between his reason and his emotions. Drawing on all of Schumpeter's writings, including many intimate diaries and letters never before used, this biography paints the full portrait of a magnetic figure who aspired to become the world's greatest economist, lover, and horseman--and admitted to failure only with the horses.
(20070401)
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - "..an economist with a tragic sense of life." Daniel Bell
I thoroughly enjoyed Prophet of Innovation as biography. I think it is the best biography I've read in twenty years.
I am not an economist, but I was first exposed to the ideas of Schumpeter in my one year general ed Economics course. This course was taught by one of only two conservative instructors in my whole college education and he was influenced by Schumpeter. (I did take economics in high school which was taught from the Keynesian model.)
That was in 1968, the ... Read More
Rating: - Intellectual honesty
I thought this to be a very dynamic book that is loaded with ideas that spring from an intellect that is honest. This is a quality that is all too rare in our times. His thought process as described by McCraw seems to me to be the envy of anyone that strives to get to the bottom or truth of something. Schumpeter is brutally honest with himself and that also is a very rare thing indeed! I'm not sure just what "truth" is but think he has come as close to it as any man can.
Brad Angell
Rating: - Analyst of Change
Moravian-born, Vienna-educated Professor Joseph Alois Schumpeter, who liked to say of his aspirations to be the world's greatest economist, horseman, and lover that only the second had given him problems, was a study in contrasts. He relished his fame as one of the interwar years' premier economic theorists yet modestly declined to mention his work in his Harvard classes or in his exhaustive book on the history of economic thought. (Citations to his work were inserted into that book by his wife after ... Read More
Rating:  - Good Biography
This is a solid biography of the brilliant economist Joseph Schumpeter. A first rate biography should present the life, times, and significance of its subject clearly. McCraw is excellent on the life, but only good on the times and significance. Schumpeter is a very interesting figure. He had a varied and sometimes turbulent personal life. He is clearly one of the most important figures in 20th century economics. His great theme, the functioning of capitalist economies, is a central issue. With the ... Read More
Rating: - Great Reading
If you want to learn about one of the great economists of our time before you delve into his work or you simply want to expand your knowledge of Schumpeter, this is certainly the book to read.
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