Book/Printed Material The decline of the independent inventor a Schumpterian story?
About this Item
Title
- The decline of the independent inventor a Schumpterian story?
Summary
- "Joseph Schumpeter argued in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy that the rise of large firms' investments in in-house R&D spelled the doom of the entrepreneurial innovator. We explore this idea by analyzing the career patterns of successive cohorts of highly productive inventors from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We find that over time highly productive inventors were increasingly likely to form long-term attachments with firms. In the Northeast, these attachments seem to have taken the form of employment positions within large firms, but in the Midwest inventors were more likely to become principals in firms bearing their names. Entrepreneurship, therefore, was by no means dead, but the increasing capital requirements--both financial and human--for effective invention and the need for inventors to establish a reputation before they could attract support made it more difficult for creative people to pursue careers as inventors. The relative numbers of highly productive inventors in the population correspondingly decreased, as did rates of patenting per capita"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Names
- Lamoreaux, Naomi R.
- Sokoloff, Kenneth Lee
- National Bureau of Economic Research
Created / Published
- Cambridge, MA : National Bureau of Economic Research, c2005.
Headings
- - Schumpeter, Joseph A.,--1883-1950
- - Inventions--Economic aspects--United States
- - Inventors--United States--History
Notes
- - Title from PDF file as viewed on 10/14/2005.
- - Includes bibliographical references.
- - Also available in print.
- - Mode of access: World Wide Web.
- - System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Call Number/Physical Location
- HB1
Digital Id
- https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gdc/gdcebookspublic.2005620010
- http://papers.nber.org/papers/W11654 External
Library of Congress Control Number
- 2005620010
Access Advisory
- Unrestricted online access
Online Format
- image