Category: Schumpeter

Searching for Schumpeter in Amazon

 

Econ Journal Watch, a fresh innovative online journal, just published a paper of mine where I document the large number of books included in Amazon.com’s "Search Within the Book" feature, that mention Schumpeter.  The nature of the mentions vary, but many relate to Schumpeter’s process of creative destruction.  The focus on creative destruction is especially pronounced in business books. 

The fact that many business practitioners find "creative destruction" to be a fruitful concept in understanding capitalism, speaks well of the concept, and speaks well of Schumpeter.

 

The citation for my paper is:

Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. "Thriving at Amazon: How Schumpeter Lives in Books Today." Econ Journal Watch 4, no. 3 (September 2007): 338-44.

 

My paper has been highlighted at: 

http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/09/10/content-analysis-using-amazoncom/

(Thanks to Kevin Rollins for alerting me to this blog entry.)

 

Cambridge Ignorant of Schumpeter

 

  The house in Cambridge, Mass. where Schumpeter lived for many years.  Source of photo:  F.M. "Mike" Scherer, posted with his permission.

 

On his way from his home to his Harvard Office, Mike Scherer walks near the homes in which Joseph Schumpeter lived over 50 years ago.

Scherer reports that the streets of Cambridge are replete with historical markers documenting the significance in intellectual history of various houses and locales.

Across the street from the impressive house in which Schumpeter lived for over 15 years, for instance, there is a sign indicating where the poet T.S. Elliot had lived for a year during a sabbatical.

But there is no sign in front of either of the homes in which Joseph Schumpeter lived (or in front of the home in which Nobel-prize-winner Wassily Leontief lived).

Scherer thinks the lesson is that economists should be more humble.  I think that the lesson is that the citizens and officials of Cambridge should be less ignorant.

 

The above account is partly from my memory of Scherer’s oral remarks in June at George Mason at the Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economics.  Here is a briefer version he sent me in an email dated 12/20/2006:

Since moving back to Harvard, I often walk to my home in West Cambridge. The shortest route is via Ash Street, right by Schumpeter’s first own home in Cambridge. The neighborhood is full of houses with historical plaques, but I looked in vain for Schumpy’s. However, across the street is a house in which T. S. Eliot lived for two years. It has a plaque! That’s a profound statement on the relative value of what we academics do.

 

    From top to bottom, for the four photos at the bottom of the entry:  The first is of the house in which Schumpeter lived for many years.  The second is of a house where Schumpeter lived for a short time.  The third is of the street signs at the corner near one of Schumpeter’s houses.  The fourth is one of the many plaques that Cambridge installs to honor those who the Cambridge community deems worthy of honor.  All of the photos above were taken on or about May 27, 2007 by F.M. "Mike" Scherer, who kindly gave them to me and gave me permission to post them.

 

Sturm und Drang Schumpeterianism

 

I am conflicted about how to evaluate Zachary’s Schumpeterian article in a recent Sunday New York Times.  On the one hand he says much that is true and useful about Schumpeter and capitalism.  On the other hand he seems to relish the destructive side of creative destruction, extending it beyond what Schumpeter intended, to include disasters such as war and environmental crises.

My view, on the other hand, is that the destructive side is usually over-estimated, can be reduced further, and is an unfortunate cost of innovation and progress.

Here is a part of the Zachary op-ed piece that I like:

 

An Austrian economist who taught at Harvard, Mr. Schumpeter in 1942 coined the term ”creative destruction” to describe what he viewed as the engine of capitalism: how new products and processes constantly overtake existing ones. In his classic work, ”Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy,” he described how unexpected innovations destroyed markets and gave rise to new fortunes.

The historian Thomas K. McCraw writes in his new biography of Schumpeter, ”Prophet of Innovation” (Belknap Press): ”Schumpeter’s signature legacy is his insight that innovation in the form of creative destruction is the driving force not only of capitalism but of material progress in general. Almost all businesses, no matter how strong they seem to be at a given moment, ultimately fail and almost always because they failed to innovate.”

Mr. Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction is justly celebrated. The economics writer David Warsh calls it the most memorable economic phrase since Adam Smith’s ”invisible hand.” Peter Drucker, the late business guru, went so far as to declare Mr. Schumpeter the most influential economist of the last century.

Clearly, any quick survey of technological change validates Mr. Schumpeter’s essential insight. The DVD destroyed the videotape (and the businesses around it). The computer obliterated the typewriter. The automobile turned the horse and buggy into an anachronism.

Today, the Web is destroying many businesses even as it gives rise to others. Though the compact disc still lives, downloadable music is threatening to make the record album history.

”Schumpeter’s central idea is just as important now as ever,” says Louis Galambos, a business historian at Johns Hopkins University. ”The heart of capitalism and its claim as an efficient economic system over the long term is the role that innovation plays.”

 

For the full commentary, see:

G. PASCAL ZACHARY.  "PING; The Silver Lining to Impending Doom."  The New York Times, Section 3  (Sun., May 6, 2007):   3.

 

“Roosevelt Warned us of Fearing Fear Itself; Now We Fear Life Itself”

 

   Source of book image:  http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/159523005X.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_V46468787_SS500_.jpg

 

I saw Todd Buchholz on C-Span and on CNBC, and I enjoyed hearing his views, so I decided to buy his Bringing the Jobs Home.  I don’t like the title, because it sort of implies that the job market is a zero-sum-game, in which one country’s gain implies another country’s loss.  Us true-blue free marketers believe that the market is a non-zero-sum game in which everyone everywhere can have jobs, and have better ones over time.

But Buchholz’s little book is fun to read, and says much that is plausible about how the government hurts the worker and reduces the efficiency of the labor market. 

Read the following excerpt for part of his rousing conclusion to the book.

(And, Aaron, I agree with you that Buchholz is wrong to say the American spirit is "innate.") 

 

(p. 177)  . . . :  Since the 1960s, each year we’ve lost a little nerve, gained another bureaucrat, another lawyer, another layer of protection against life’s uncertainties.  We have gotten used to a government that aims to coddle us but ends up both preventing us from growing and dampening the innate American spirit.  The spirit still stirs but gets buried under the weight of the nanny state.

. . .

(p. 178)  American government officials today cannot put our standard of living in a lockbox to preserve, protect and defend us.  Franklin D. Roosevelt warned us of fearing fear itself; now we fear life itself. 

. . .

(p. 179)  To paraphrase Churchill, Americans did not sail the perilous Atlantic, scale the Appalachians and struggle past the Rockies because we were made of cotton candy.

 

Source: 

Buchholz, Todd G. Bringing the Jobs Home: How the Left Created the Outsourcing Crisis–and How We Can Fix It. New York: Sentinel, 2004.

 

Should Netscape Be Viewed as a Failed Company, or as a Successful Project?

 

(p. 53)  Recall the story of Netscape, once the darling of the New Economy.  Netscape was formed in 1994.  It went public in 1995.  And by 1999, it was gone, purchased by America Online and subsumed into AOL’s operation.  Life span:  four years.  Half-life:  two years.  Was Netscape a company—or was it really a project?  Does the distinction even matter?  What matters most is that this short-lived entity put several products on the market, prompted established companies (notably Microsoft) to shift strategies, and (p. 54) equipped a few thousand individuals with experience, wealth, and connections that they could bring to their next project.

And Netscape is not alone.  A University of Texas study found that between 1970 and 1992, the half-life of Texas businesses shrank by 50 percent.  Likewise, a Federal Reserve analysis of New York companies found that the type of firm that created the most new jobs (microbusineses with fewer than ten employees) often had the shortest life span.  The life cycle of companies has been that jobs, too, have diminishing half-lives.  Ten years ago, nobody ever heard of a Web developer.  Ten years from now, nobody may remember Web developers.

Most important, at the very moment the longevity of companies is shrinking, the longevity of individuals is expanding.  Unlike Americans in the twentieth century, most of us today can expect to outlive just about any organization for which we work.  It’s hard to imagine a lifelong job at an organization whose lifetime will be shorter–often much shorter–than your own.

 

Source:

Pink, Daniel H. Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live. New York: Warner Business Books, 2001.

 

“Free Agent Nation” Still Rings True

 

   Source of book image:  http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/10/ae/8ca3d250fca0f5b077de4010.L.jpg

 

Daniel Pink’s 2001 Free Agent Nation has been on my to-read list since it first came out.  It finally made it to the top—at least in the author-abridged two-cassette incarnation.

I always found the basic idea appealing:  the appeal of the freedom of working for yourself—Harry Browne’s How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, but for real. 

But I also was a little anxious; fearful that the book would place too much emphasis on seeming flash-in-the-pan dot.com labor market phenomena and rhetoric.

To my relief, I can report that little in the book depends on the dot.com over-exuberance.  The internet appears, as an infrastructure enabler, but the free agents are mainly doing more standard stuff, but doing it from a home office, and doing it project-by-project.

Pink is not an academic, which has pros and cons.  One of the pros is that his prose is pleasant.  Another is that he has an ear for a good story and a telling example.  Perhaps a con is that he often hasn’t had the time, or the interest, (or maybe the data just don’t exist) to often follow-up with how widespread his examples are.

Still there’s some good stuff here.  Like suggesting that free agency is what you would expect more of us to pursue, as we work our way up Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.  (In college I was enthused enough about Maslow that I was thinking of minoring in psychology, until they told me how many hours I would have to run rats through mazes before I’d be allowed to open a Maslow book.)

And there’s plausible discussion about how in some ways free agency is more secure than a regular job (multiple clients means diversification).  And there is more freedom to control your own time, and be your authentic self.

There’s also some good discussion of how the government makes free agency harder through health care and taxation policies.

All-in-all, this book helps make the case that labor can thrive in a Schumpeterian world of creative destruction.

 

Reference to the book:

Pink, Daniel H. Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live. New York: Warner Business Books, 2001.

 

Advice from Charles Koch: A Successful Business Schumpeterian

   Source of book image:  http://media.wiley.com/product_data/coverImage300/89/04701398/0470139889.jpg

 

When Charles Koch became the chief executive of Rock Island Oil & Refining after the death of his father in 1967, the company was a moderately successful enterprise based in Wichita, Kan. He renamed it Koch Industries in honor of his father — and over the next 40 years proceeded to transform Fred Koch’s legacy into the world’s largest private company. Koch Industries — now a commodity and financial conglomerate that includes brands such as Stainmaster, Lycra and Dixie cups — has 80,000 employees in 60 countries. Its revenue last year was $90 billion. In one generation, the book value of Koch Industries has increased 2,000-fold. That’s an 18% compounded annual return — comparable with the long-term track record of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

. . .

At age 71, Mr. Koch clearly feels that the time has come to pass along the business formula that has served him so well. In "The Science of Success," he describes a technique, called Market-Based Management (MBM), that he says evolved from his reading, early in his career, in history, political science, economics and other disciplines. He arrived at an understanding of what allows a free society to prosper, Mr. Koch says, and decided to apply those principles to business.

. . .

. . .   He is especially fond of the "Austrian school" of economists, such as Ludwig von Mises and Joseph Schumpeter, who emphasized production processes, technology and the dynamic competitive models of "creative destruction." 

 

For the full review, see: 

MARK SKOUSEN.  "BOOKS; A Short Course in Long-Term Value."   The Wall Street Journal  (Weds., March 7, 2007):  D8. 

(Note:  ellipses added.)

 

Another Effort to Explore the Black-Box of Innovation

 

(p. 210)  Schumpeter argues that innovation can happen endogenously and that its main source is the creative entrepreneur.  Schumpeterian innovation is still black-boxed, however, because it is the product of the ingenuity of entrepreneurs and cannot be reproduced systematically.

. . .

The reconstructionist view takes off where the new growth theory left off.  Building on the new growth theory, the reconstructionist view suggests how knowledge and ideas are deployed in the process of creation to produce endogenous growth for the firm.  In particular, it proposes that such a process of creation can occur in any organization at any time by the cognitive reconstruction of existing data and market elements in a fundamentally new way.

 

Source:

Kim, W. Chan, and Renée Mauborgne. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005.

 

Leapfrog the Elevator Competition into a Blue Ocean

 

(p. 178)  They wanted to cut waste, freeing people to produce higher-quality elevators faster at lower cost to leapfrog the competition.  But plant employees could not have known that.

 

Source: 

Kim, W. Chan, and Renée Mauborgne. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005.