INNOVATION AS A CREATIVE RESPONSE. A REAPPRAISAL OF THE SCHUMPETERIAN LEGACY

The paper uncovers the merits of the essay “The creative response in economic history” published by Joseph Alois Schumpeter in the Journal of Economic History in 1947 and ‘almost’ forgotten since then. The correct appreciation of this Schumpeterian contribution is important to for two reasons. It enables to better understand the evolution of Schumpeter’s thinking. The 1947 contribution should be regarded as the final attempt to provide a synthesis of his evolving approaches to the understanding the origins, the causes and the consequences of innovation in economics and in the economy. This 1947 essay is most important also because it portrays innovation as the result of a creative reaction conditional to the characteristics of the context into which it takes place anticipating the notion of innovation as an emergent property of system dynamics.