Two posts on the History of Entrepreneurship Thought — elsewhere

I have just written a couple of posts on contributions of Fritz Redlich to the study of entrepreneurship. They appear at the blog of the McQuinn Center on Entrepreneurship as this and that.

Redlich was a fascinating character who is not well known by current entrepreneurship scholars. He was trained in the manner of the  Youngest German Historical School, finishing his doctorate in Berlin, literally, on the eve of Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination. After WWI, he entered the family chemicals business and worked as a private scholar. He eventually completed the major work required for his habilitation (and eventual access to a professorship) just before the Nazis nationalized the family business and forced him into exile in the US. For an excellent biographical sketch, I recommend the eulogy written by Kenneth Carpenter and Alfred Chandler in 1979.

Redlich wrote several papers on entrepreneurship. Many exist only in German and there is no widely available synthesis of them. Others were written in English, as a result of counsel by Joseph Schumpeter to continue his studies on American business leaders and to publish them in English. The posts I note above look at two of these papers.

I have been remiss at keeping this site active. I guess trying to be active here, there, and there has dissipated my energies — which are at a low level, anyhow…