Spatial aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation

Excerpt

Entrepreneurship, with product and process innovation as especially important subsets, is at the core of the regional development process. But the term “entrepreneurship” can mean different things, especially in empirical studies of entrepreneurial phenomena. Among theories attempting to treat the topic with more theoretical rigour, there are three classic treatises that have stood the test of time. Joseph Schumpeter’s innovation-driven theory of economic development (Schumpeter 1934), which first appeared in German in 1912 (Schumpeter 2006), focuses on disruptive innovations that cause disequilibrating shocks to the economic system as the cause of economic development and as symptomatic of dynamic capitalism. In Schumpeter’s narrative, the entrepreneur is a heroic figure who singlehandedly brings about change through the introduction of new combinations of land and labour (with capital treated as a mixture of land and labour). Steve Jobs’ innovation of the MacIntosh personal computer and, later, iPhone and Mark Zuckerberg’s innovation of Facebook are examples that can illustrate the Schumpeterian theory, but it would be misleading to apply it to the more mundane and quantitatively numerous business start-ups and incremental innovations that are the mainstay of empirical entrepreneurship studies. …