Introduction to the Schumpeterian theory of economic development a century later

The first edition of Theory of economic development was published in 1911. It is a well known fact that after his death Joseph Alois Schumpeter – the most quoted economist after Keynes – experienced a purgatorial season from which he emerged at the time of the first petroleum shock, at the beginning of the 1970s, when the concept of Kondratiev’s waves regained a leading role. Thereafter, Schumpeter was reevaluated once again, particularly during the years of the New economy, while new forms of entrepreneurship and innovation were arising, up until the second half of the 1990’s, when the financial logics bound to risk capital and the start-ups emerged. The importance thus gained by innovation as an essential rule (if not the main rule) of the competitive and strategic game, and the aim of the newly introduced industrial policies (consider the Schumpeterian state1) seem to highlight the perspicacity and the pertinence of Schumpeter’s vision of which Theory of economic development is the opening work.