1. Creative Destruction, Entrepreneurship, & Discovery
Russell S. Sobel, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship
Baker School of Business
The Citadel

2. What is Entrepreneurship?
Harder than you might think….
An inventor in an existing company?
A Subway franchise owner?
What about non-business cases like..

3. Military Entrepreneurship?
To This:
From This:

4. Social Entrepreneurship?

5. Political or Legal Entrepreneurship?
Gerrymandering – Gov. Elbridge Gerry (1812)
Illinois NC

6. Possible Definitions? Traditional (narrow) definition:
An entrepreneur is someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.
Broader definition:
An entrepreneur is an agent of change.

7. Academic Ideas on the Subject
Israel Kirzner
An entrepreneur is someone who discovers previously overlooked or unknown profit opportunities
Discovery is incentivized by profit

8. Invention vs. Innovation

9. Joseph Schumpeter’s Entrepreneur
Two Aspects He Stressed:
‘Creative Destruction’
New Combinations of Resources

10. Joseph Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction
Capitalism...is by nature a method of economic change... the new goods, the new methods of production or transportation ... that revolutionize the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.
This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.
From Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942)

14. Our Phones

16. Our Entertainment

17. Our Science

18. Our Computers MacBook Air Least expensive-13-inch, 128GB, $850.00
Most expensive- 13-inch, 256GB, $1,299.00

19. Our Video Games

20. Our Video Games

21. Our Medicine

22. Creative Destruction An economy undergoes continuous change
– some industries fail, others are born
According to Shumpeter entrepreneurs search for new combinations of resources
Capitalism critically relies on the profit and loss system to direct this process

23. Creative Destruction’s Opponents

24. Thank You / Q&A Russell S. Sobel, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship
Baker School of Business
The Citadel