Who? Joseph Schumpeter, of course.
I wonder why he’s not more well-known, more celebrated, among innovators?
Perhaps it’s because he was an economist. But what an economist.
He was born in 1883 in Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic, and moved to Vienna aged ten, where he was to study law. In time he became a professor of economics and government at the University of Czernowitz, later serving as finance minister in Austria and as president of a private bank.
In 1932 he moved to Harvard and the USA. During his time there, his views were regarded as “old-fashioned”, not at all in tune with the dominant Keynesianism of the time.
Fundamentally, Schumpeter believed that capitalism was driven by a continuous process of innovation and by “creative destruction”.
Was Picasso aware of Schumpeter’s work when he said: “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction”?
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