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Creating Oportunity

Zoltan J. Acs

in Why Philanthropy Matters: How the Wealthy Give, and What It Means for Our Economic Well-Being

This chapter describes the system of opportunity creation in the United States, which has been a series of inventions and reinventions of the means by which opportunity has been provided. It begins ... More

This chapter describes the system of opportunity creation in the United States, which has been a series of inventions and reinventions of the means by which opportunity has been provided. It begins with a historical background on efforts to suppress opportunity—or at least keep a monopoly hold on it—particularly in Britain. It then considers how opportunity has been embedded in American-style capitalism in two fundamental ways. The first is by equipping individuals with the skills they need to participate in capitalism; the second relates to the functioning of innovation and markets, and to the ability of new industries, firms, and jobs to challenge the status quo—namely, creative destruction. It also highlights the fundamental tension between wealth creation and maintaining economic opportunity. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role played by schools and education reformers in the history of opportunity and opportunity creation in America.Less

Destructive Creativity: The Arts in the Information Age

Alan Liu

in The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information

The rationale of contemporary knowledge work is “creative destruction,” with the emphasis on “creative” and almost no serious reflection on “destruction.” The question of a future aesthetics is the ... More

The rationale of contemporary knowledge work is “creative destruction,” with the emphasis on “creative” and almost no serious reflection on “destruction.” The question of a future aesthetics is the question of the general legitimation of art in such an age of creative destruction. What is the function of the creative arts in a world of perpetually “innovative” information and knowledge work? The special potential of the arts in the age of knowledge work may well be to complement the humanities lesson that “cool has a history” with the crucial inverse of that lesson: history can be cool. Cool à la mode—the cool of the instantaneous present—can no longer be the exclusive obsession of knowledge workers. In the age of “creative destruction,” the sense of history will also need to be cool. This chapter looks at viral aesthetics and the potential of the new aesthetics of “destructive creativity” in the information age.Less

Transitional Recession: Expectations, Reality, Interpretations

Grzegorz W. Kolodko

in From Shock to Therapy: The Political Economy of Postsocialist Transformation

In order to examine the conditions where equilibrium between demand and supply takes place, this chapter establishes the connection of individual expectations and the understanding of the ... More

In order to examine the conditions where equilibrium between demand and supply takes place, this chapter establishes the connection of individual expectations and the understanding of the implementation of trade liberalisation and structural stabilisation, which resulted in the widespread financial depression and political chaos in the 1990s. Also, shortcomings in policy planning and execution as well as drawbacks of ineffective execution of the ‘shock therapy’ and the ‘creative destruction’ are taken into consideration. Legal practitioners, government officials, and other concerned individuals took relief methods to counteract these consequences through collaboration of the strengths and resolution of the flaws of planned systems and free market. Another technique is the alteration on the regulations about property rights and production means and results.Less

Five Aspects of the Modern Temporal Regime

Aleida Assmann

in Is Time Out of Joint?: On the Rise and Fall of the Modern Time Regime

This chapter reconstructs and critically examines the history of the modern time regime. The worldview associated with modernity's time regime rests on various presuppositions, five of which are ... More

This chapter reconstructs and critically examines the history of the modern time regime. The worldview associated with modernity's time regime rests on various presuppositions, five of which are examined in this chapter. These issues are closely related and directly build on one another: temporal rupture, the fiction of beginning, creative destruction, the invention of the historical, and finally, acceleration. In doing so, the chapter attempts to find out how the modern time regime came into being and the values associated with it that started Western civilization on its particular trajectory. It also considers how that regime has been translated into action and collective self-awareness, historically and politically. Where the values of Western culture come from, how they inform its sense of the rest of the world, and which of these values are worth safeguarding or are considered problematic are also explored.Less

The Wealth of Nations

Zoltan J. Acs

in Why Philanthropy Matters: How the Wealthy Give, and What It Means for Our Economic Well-Being

This chapter examines wealth creation as a defining feature of capitalism. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, American research universities have increasingly moved to the forefront of ... More

This chapter examines wealth creation as a defining feature of capitalism. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, American research universities have increasingly moved to the forefront of innovation, playing a more critical role in developing new technologies used by large companies and entrepreneurs. In recent decades, one university and one region in particular have become almost synonymous with knowledge creation and the high-tech industry: Stanford University and Silicon Valley. The chapter shows how Leland Stanford and his contemporaries helped forge the relationship between creative destruction in the American economy and the institutions that promote opportunity. It considers how the economic openness that allowed entrepreneurs to accumulate fortunes has also nurtured social institutions, such as universities and foundations. It also discusses the issue of income inequality, the dilemma of what to do with wealth, the distinction between charity and philanthropy.Less

The Resurgence of Route 128: The Triumph of Open Systems

Michael H. Best

in The New Competitive Advantage: The Renewal of American Industry

Boston's Route 128 illustrates the concepts of regional technology capability, technology genealogy, and technology roadmap. Precision machining and complex product systems are regional technological ... More

Boston's Route 128 illustrates the concepts of regional technology capability, technology genealogy, and technology roadmap. Precision machining and complex product systems are regional technological capabilities that have been redefined, and product applications have evolved through a series of technology domain transitions from the mechanical to the electrical and electronic, and via an extension of Moore's Law into the age of nanotechnology and self‐assembly processes. Old industries have gone and new industries have emerged through a regional systems integration process reminiscent of Schumpeterian ‘creative destruction’. The recent transition from a vertical integration to an open‐systems business model has fostered a regional capability to rapidly integrate and reintegrate activities and technologies required for rapid new product development in complex product systems.Less

Introduction: Literature and Creative Destruction

Alan Liu

in The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information

Cultural criticism has been brutally effective in demonstrating that the churning of literary capital has always been a part of the world of literature. A distinctive form of that churning in ... More

Cultural criticism has been brutally effective in demonstrating that the churning of literary capital has always been a part of the world of literature. A distinctive form of that churning in relation to the general economic and social churning is what Joseph A. Schumpeter, in his classic phrase about capitalism, called “creative destruction.” This book is a study of the cultural life of information or, more broadly, of contemporary “knowledge work.” It explores the role of literature in that cultural life and the future of the literary when the true aestheticism unbound of knowledge work—as seen on innumerable web pages—is “cool.” Cool is the techno-informatic vanishing point of contemporary aesthetics, psychology, morality, politics, spirituality, and everything. The book offers a historical sketch of knowledge work and a theoretical frame for investigating its culture of cool. It then follows up with an argument about the role of humanities education and the arts in the world of cool. This latter argument turns on the general character of historical and aesthetic knowledge in the information age.Less

National Champions and Economic Growth

Kathy Fogel, Randall Morck, and Bernard Yeung

in Industrial Policy for National Champions

The Schumpeterian view of the association of economic growth and creative destruction, a process in which innovative and commercially successful firms destroy large established dominant firms, has ... More

The Schumpeterian view of the association of economic growth and creative destruction, a process in which innovative and commercially successful firms destroy large established dominant firms, has been substantially validated in recent years. Macroeconomic models of managerial entrenchment have implications for wider economic growth. If a country, in its aim to protect its large established champions from creative destruction, neglects rapidly growing new upstart firms and hinders innovators, it is said to be basically compromising its long-term economic growth. Corporate routines are considered to provide significant innovation that leads to creative destruction; however, it has been found that corporate control turnovers do not lead to change in routines. This chapter examines the dynamic effects of national champions and also measures correlation between these champions and economic growth in standard cross-country growth regressions; the authors posit that there is a negative relationship between capital accumulation and control turnover.Less

Transformation and the Acceleration of Technical Progress

János Kornai

in Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy: Two Essays on the Nature of Capitalism

This chapter argues that despite capitalism’s built-in propensity for entrepreneurship, innovation, and dynamism, it a just a propensity, a disposition, and thus not a sure thing. It is the social, ... More

This chapter argues that despite capitalism’s built-in propensity for entrepreneurship, innovation, and dynamism, it a just a propensity, a disposition, and thus not a sure thing. It is the social, political, and legal environment created by human beings that influence how far and how quickly the propensity is breaking through. It depends on the business climate, and to a large extent, on the courage, inspiration, and competence of individuals who might become entrepreneurs. The chapter presents stories behind the introduction of revolutionary new products, including Skype. It also discusses the causal relationship between capitalism and the availability of phone services; and the term “creative destruction”, which describes the two inseparable sides of fast technical progress.Less

Constructing Carceral Space: How Englewood Became the Ghetto

John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith

in Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change

This chapter offers a historical account of how Englewood—a South Side neighborhood that went from white to black and from middle-class to poor—became a ghetto. More specifically, it examines the ... More

This chapter offers a historical account of how Englewood—a South Side neighborhood that went from white to black and from middle-class to poor—became a ghetto. More specifically, it examines the material and representational construction of Englewood by focusing on two major moments that helped produce its current space: the production of “normal” and prosperous white Englewood followed by the production of abnormal and poor black Englewood. After providing an overview of neighborhood change in Englewood, the chapter considers how creative destruction and spatial racism worked to transform it into a ghetto and a carceral space. It then explores how Englewood has become a preferred site for police experimentation and training using ever more force and different schemes of discipline and punishment. It also discusses resident actions that are engagements in power relations and thus forms of resistance and self-determination pushing back the dominant power.Less

The Metropolitan Life in Ruins Architectural and Fictional Speculations in New York, 1893–1919

in Untimely Ruins: An Archaeology of American Urban Modernity, 1819-1919

In 1909, Metropolitan Life, the world's largest life insurer, completed the tallest tower in New York and in America. Shortly thereafter, the magnificent building suffered a series of catastrophes, ... More

In 1909, Metropolitan Life, the world's largest life insurer, completed the tallest tower in New York and in America. Shortly thereafter, the magnificent building suffered a series of catastrophes, such as being struck by the tail of a comet, exposed to poisonous gases, and submerged under an ocean. Despite these debacles, the building somehow remained standing in apparent perpetuity. The motif of the ruin became firmly identified with the emerging genre of science fiction and the skyscrapers of New York City. The notion of modern skyscrapers as antiquated ruins was belied by Manhattan's economic geography. The skyscraper's lifespan appeared to be limited by economic even more than technological and aesthetic obsolescence. Critics who coined the terms “doctrine of the scrap heap” or “perpetual motion quest,” which anticipate later critiques of creative destruction, remained largely ambivalent about, rather than overtly critical of, the skyscraper's troubled economic status. One writer who held architecture to higher standards and denounce the reduction of the office building to an economic problem was Henry James.Less

Gales of Creative Destruction

Calestous Juma

in Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies

The new millennium brought a rising tide of economic, social, and ecological challenges. This chapter argues that while rapid technological adoption in response to mounting global challenges is ... More

The new millennium brought a rising tide of economic, social, and ecological challenges. This chapter argues that while rapid technological adoption in response to mounting global challenges is welcomed by large sections of society, it also triggers societal responses that seek to slow down the influence of technological change. The fear of loss, not novelty, underlies social tensions over technologies, some of which take the form of outright opposition by segments of society against change. Fear of loss can lead individuals or groups to avoid change brought by innovation even if that means forgoing gains. But much of the concern is driven by perceptions of loss, not necessarily by concrete evidence of loss. The fear or perception of loss may take material forms, but it also includes intellectual and psychological factors such as challenges to established worldviews or identity.Less

Honorable Business and Treating People the Right Way

James R. Otteson

in Honorable Business: A Framework for Business in a Just and Humane Society

Chapters 7 and 8 look more carefully at a series of worries about, and objections raised to, business, markets, and commercial society generally. Chapter 7 looks specifically at concerns about how we ... More

Chapters 7 and 8 look more carefully at a series of worries about, and objections raised to, business, markets, and commercial society generally. Chapter 7 looks specifically at concerns about how we should treat people and whether markets and business are, or can be, consistent with proper relations among people. It examines the inequality to which markets can lead, considering in this connection G. A. Cohen’s famous “camping trip” scenario and his argument for “socialist equality of opportunity.” In contrast to Cohen’s “camping trip,” this chapter offers a “shipwrecked on an island” scenario, from which conclusions different from Cohen’s may be drawn. The chapter also examines the seeming unfairness of some of the outcomes of business activity, including in particular the undeserved luck involved. Finally, it explores the instability and displacement inherent in the “creative destruction” (in Schumpeter’s famous phrase) of markets, including its effects on human community.Less

History and the Militarized Landscape: Long Historical and Broad Social Views

David Biggs

in At Nature's Edge: The Global Present and Long-term History

The environmental history of war, especially its impacts on landscape, encompasses a much broader scope than the conflicts and the historiography of the late twentieth century. Ideas on the social ... More

The environmental history of war, especially its impacts on landscape, encompasses a much broader scope than the conflicts and the historiography of the late twentieth century. Ideas on the social and environmental processes of conflict draw from a much longer, global discourse. This chapter uses the ancient-to-modern conflict landscape of central Vietnam to argue for a multi-layered, broader analysis of the environmental history of conflict.Less

Building the Organization or Building the Community?: Community Development in a Time of Flexible Accumulation

John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith

in Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change

This chapter examines how community development can be caught in the trappings of flexible accumulation and even contribute to the displacement of the people it claims to represent. Focusing on the ... More

This chapter examines how community development can be caught in the trappings of flexible accumulation and even contribute to the displacement of the people it claims to represent. Focusing on the process of social engineering vis-à-vis mixed-income housing that the Chicago Housing Authority has been advancing through its Plan for Transformation, the chapter shows how creative destruction and the production of space for accumulation complicates our interpretation of community development practice. It first considers five community development approaches in Chicago before discussing how race and income help create the ghetto as a particular form of homogenous space that requires intervention. It also discusses the ways in which the representation of mixed-income communities is being used to advance gentrification, to classify the poor as either deserving or undeserving, and to further push them into super-ghettoes or destabilized neighborhoods occupied by poor nonwhites.Less

Introduction: The Human Cost of Creative Destruction

Venus Bivar

in Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France

The postwar French state struggled to find the right balance between quantity and quality in the agricultural sector. European integration and the general drive to modernize the French economy drove ... More

The postwar French state struggled to find the right balance between quantity and quality in the agricultural sector. European integration and the general drive to modernize the French economy drove French planners to push for greater productivity, while simultaneously drawing on the French reputation for quality artisanal production in order to market food stuffs to foreign consumers. The end result was a food system split between the big-box food store and the open-air market. This push for higher productivity launched a wave of Schumpeterian creative destruction that put many farmers out of business. One of the most important tools available to the proponents of agricultural industrialization was land use policy. Through the consolidation of holdings, farms achieved greater efficiency while farmers were pushed off their lands.Less

Kill the Inventor! If Capitalism Spurs Innovation, Who Is the Horse?

Jesse Goldstein

in Planetary Improvement: Cleantech Entrepreneurship and the Contradictions of Green Capitalism

The saying “capitalism spurs innovation” conjures a sense that capitalism is promoting, accelerating and encouraging creative advance. However, spurs are also a disciplinary device, used to break in ... More

The saying “capitalism spurs innovation” conjures a sense that capitalism is promoting, accelerating and encouraging creative advance. However, spurs are also a disciplinary device, used to break in horses and make them comply with the will of their riders. Inventor-entrepreneurs are subjected to precisely this sort of “training,” or discipline – what Henri Lefebvre refers to as dressage. This chapter explores how dressage operates through the expectations and formal legal agreements that accompany venture investments. Though it is common to conceptualize entrepreneurs as the creative vanguard of neoliberal capitalism, here we see instead that capital, or the investors operating in its name, are mainly interested in working with “doubly free entrepreneurs” who are willing to renounce direct control over their innovations and instead become employees that are able to be fired as needed. Entrepreneurial creativity represents one small aspect of a broader, intergenerational and inherently collective capacity to create, make, maintain and imagine. Dressage speaks to a more broadly understood enclosure of this creativity, subtly reinforced through the lionization of entrepreneurship as the pinnacle of creative activity. As a result, a wide array of possibilities and potentials are actively disciplined and reduced to the potential to create (green) capital.Less