Metamorphosis of Capitalism: Chronicle of Schumpeterian Thinking

Horst Hanusch () and Andreas Pyka ()
Additional contact information
Horst Hanusch: University of Augsburg
Andreas Pyka: Institute of Economics, University of Hohenheim

A chapter in Schumpeterian Legacy in Modern Times, 2026, pp 559-570 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter advances Post-Schumpeterian Economics to address the profound transformation of capitalism in the twenty-first century. While Schumpeterian economics has been highly successful in explaining innovation-driven growth and structural change in the second half of the twentieth century, its established framework increasingly fails to capture the scale, complexity, and existential nature of contemporary global challenges. Comprehensive Neo-Schumpeterian Economics (CNSE) represented a first major conceptual advance by integrating industry, financial markets, and the public sector into a three-pillar, co-evolutionary framework that enables an endogenous understanding of structural change, institutional dynamics, and socio-economic transitions driven by technological paradigms. Here we argue that even this extended framework insufficiently addresses the growing fragility and missing resilience of capitalist systems, i.e. the requirement of evolutionary robustness. Repeated global crises—from the dot-com collapse and the global financial crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic—demonstrate that innovation-driven development does not automatically generate positive-sum outcomes. Moreover, the Anthropocene exposes a fundamental blind spot in existing Schumpeterian approaches: the neglect of ecological boundaries and the destabilized relationship between humans and nature. At the same time, currently emerging disruptive technological paradigms introduce new geopolitical and existential risks that exceed the explanatory reach of innovation-centered models. Post-Schumpeterian Economics is introduced as a framework that embeds innovation and economic development within a planetary, social, and geopolitical context. Economic development is reconceptualized as a process of transformation rather than growth alone, guided by the dual objectives of prosperity and security. Security is understood both as planetary security and as geopolitical and existential security. The chapter concludes that Post-Schumpeterian Economics offers a coherent research agenda for integrating innovation dynamics with ecological constraints, social justice, institutional change, and power relations, thereby providing a forward-looking framework for understanding and shaping the future of capitalism under conditions of global existential risks.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eccchp:978-3-032-26294-3_29

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783032262943

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-26294-3_29

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Economic Complexity and Evolution from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().