Invention and Development: Toward Schumpeter's early innovation theory

Daisuke Kobayashi

No 292, Discussion paper series. A from Graduate School of Economics and Business Administration, Hokkaido University

Abstract: It has been the consensus among researchers that Schumpeter clearly distinguished the notions of innovation and invention, even neglecting the notion of invention in his work. Consequently, there has been very little effort made to tackle the relationship between Schumpeter’s development theory and the invention theories that were popular in the fields of anthropology and archaeology at that time, making it difficult to grasp how Schumpeter elaborated his own development theory. However, a close examination of his early works demonstrates that Schumpeter’s development theory can also be understood in the context of the debates surrounding the notion of invention. In Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, Schumpeter presented his static agent/innovator dyad with reference to ideas or terms used in the debates of invention being conducted around that time by anthropologists and archaeologists. In the present paper, the author seeks to depict the history of the concept of invention, helped by the work of Benoît Godin, and discusses how Schumpeter presented his development theory based on the ideas involved in the invention debates.

Keywords: invention; evolutionism; diffusionism; unilinear development; psychic unity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2015-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-ino, nep-knm and nep-pke
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