Tuesday, April 14, 2009

creative destruction

Schumpeter at Harvard, 1940s

"But in capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not [price] competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization ... competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives."
- Joesph A. Schumpeter [1883-1950], Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942, who inspired Intel co-founder and President Andy Grove [born 1936], who was more essential to the high-tech revolution than Bill Gates[born 1955], Steve Jobs [born 1955], Larry Ellison [born 1944]  and others according to Mark Andreessen [born 1971].

An earlier reference to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs here. Another reference to Jobs here.