Foreword
THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY to understanding entrepreneurship cannot be underestimated. Through history, we see the power, the resilience, and the complexity of this phenomenon. We gain a better understanding of the changing nature of entrepreneurial activity over time. We learn more about the complex web of social and institutional influences on entrepreneurship. And we develop a broader awareness of the impact of entrepreneurship over time—on individuals and on society as a whole.
Historical work in this area complements the increased attention to entrepreneurship among economists in recent years. Among many other topics, economists have elucidated a great deal about firm formation, growth, and death; the institutional influences on entrepreneurship; the demographic and personality characteristics of entrepreneurs; and the important role of entrepreneurship in economic growth. While economic theory and models offer a great deal of insight, history offers a different lens to view entrepreneurship. It allows us to understand specific examples at a deeper level, to probe the varied nature of the activity, to understand the environments in which entrepreneurs have thrived, and, perhaps most importantly, to see patterns and understand the evolution of innovation and entrepreneurship through the years.
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the world's leading foundation in increasing understanding of and encouraging entrepreneurship, has directed significant resources in recent years toward the study of entrepreneurship among academics, with a particular focus on economics and history. Recognizing that entrepreneurship has long been absent from both history and economics textbooks, we initially sought to create a place for a new discipline among academics. The work we have seen in recent years has gone far beyond our early goals. Interest in the study of entrepreneurship has flourished throughout the academic community, and the wealth of information gleaned has both taught us a great deal and inspired us to learn more. At the Kauffman Foundation, we believe that if the public is to understand the importance of entrepreneurship to economic growth today, people will need to learn more about the role entrepreneurship played in economic growth throughout history.
This volume, in particular, breaks new ground as the first book to trace the history of entrepreneurship throughout the world since antiquity. Spanning the ages and covering the globe, this volume takes us from Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon to the present. It offers insights from the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The work presented in this volume testifies not only to the prevalence of entrepreneurial activity throughout history, but also to the changes in this activity over time and to its role in economic change and growth more generally.
While the entrepreneurial activity described during each historical period varies greatly, commonalities and themes emerge. At a detailed level, this work gives us great insight into the variables that affect entrepreneurship. We see the varied impact of culture and religion on this important phenomenon, in some cases inspiring individuals to pursue entrepreneurial dreams and in others making these dreams nearly impossible. We gain a greater understanding of the institutions that drive entrepreneurship, from contract law to the patent system. We understand the tension between productive entrepreneurship that enhances the growth of the economy and unproductive entrepreneurial activity that exploits opportunities for personal gain. And, finally, we see the distinction between the replicative entrepreneurs who simply create more new businesses like those they see around them and the truly innovative entrepreneurs who create new products and services and change the very nature of the market. It is this understanding that allows for the public policy lessons we draw from history. We come to learn how to promote innovative, productive entrepreneurship today by discovering the catalysts for and the impediments to entrepreneurial activity in the past.
On a broad scale, these accounts go even further: they offer us a window into the seemingly innate impulse for innovation and entrepreneurship that cuts across cultures and time periods. The diversity of the accounts is illuminating, but it is the commonalities that ultimately offer us a means of understanding human nature and the entrepreneurial impulse. We see here that people have been inspired to create, to innovate, and to market their productive abilities since the early years of recorded history. And we understand that it is this drive that has allowed our society to reach its current level of sophistication and complexity.
This comprehensive consideration of entrepreneurial activity throughout recorded history strikes out in new directions and encourages us to move further down this path. Each of these chapters, in fact, is an entrée into a much deeper, more complex story of entrepreneurs in a particular time and place. Learning more about each of these unique periods will give us a better understanding of the drivers of entrepreneurship, the barriers that impede it, the impact it creates, and, ultimately, human nature.
This volume also serves as an outstanding second contribution to the new Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. A collaborative effort between the Kauffman Foundation, the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at New York University, and Princeton University Press, this series of books will explore entrepreneurship and innovation from a wide range of disciplines and approaches. As one of the earliest works in this important collection, this volume both sets a high standard for the quality and depth of work in the series and suggests a broad research agenda for other historians. Indeed, further research on entrepreneurship is not only necessary for insight into policy matters; it is this study that allows us to understand who we are and how we have arrived at this point in time.
CARL J. SCHRAMM