A Brief History of Entrepreneurship: The Pioneers, Profiteers, and Racketeers Who Shaped Our World

Especially when it is guided by that rare combination of imagination, energy, and shrewdness, the entrepreneurial impulse can be the forerunner of momentous transformation, an instigator of significant changes that extend well beyond the realm of industry. As tantalizing as space tourism seems from a modern-day perspective, many of the entrepreneurs highlighted in the earlier chapters of this book were involved in enterprises that, for their respective eras, were just as radically innovative and transformational as the work of Musk, Bezos, and company.

The entrepreneurs behind the PC Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the conquest of the New World, the marvels of Song dynasty China, the pollinations of the Islamic Empire, the commercial colonialism of the Phoenicians, and the urbanization of Mesopotamia all served as catalysts of momentous and largely irreversible developments in human history. Yet for most of these enterprising individuals, altering the course of human history did not rank high, if at all, on their list of motivations.

Nevertheless, while most entrepreneurs have been compelled by a Darwinian drive for financial gain and greater social status, there are others who have professed more altruistic motivations. With varying degrees of sincerity, these more idealistic men and women have cited such ideals as religion, the spread of “civilization,” the democratization of the automobile, and bringing the world together through technology as inspirations for their respective enterprises. However, even history’s genuinely idealistic entrepreneurs have been aware that these loftier goals are contingent upon the more basic matter of profitability.

In this vein, Anita Roddick, the founder of natural cosmetics giant the Body Shop, once declared, “Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is.”¹ Yet even in those instances in which survival is an entrepreneur’s sole motivation, it is evident that the process of creating a new money-making organism, as it were, and tending to its establishment and growth can lead to broader and often unanticipated consequences for society.

Certainly, there have been many entrepreneurs—from the tea traders of Tang dynasty China to the bootleggers of Prohibition-era Chicago—whose overriding ambition was simply the survival and expansion of their respective enterprises. Yet in the service of that goal, they engaged in the disruption that Schumpeter referred to as “creative destruction.” In other words, they exercised their entrepreneurial creativity to supplant the old with the new by, for example, replacing unwieldy metal coinage with light paper money.

Moreover, it is evident that many of these disruptive enterprises have not necessarily been wildly innovative in terms of technology, although many have, particularly in recent centuries. Rather, the innovation may lie in how a product or service is created, distributed, promoted, or delivered. The ingenuity of Sergei Galitsky’s Magnit, for example, lies not so much in the products it provides to the Russian market but in its sophisticated information systems and the superior efficiency with which its products are sourced, stocked, and shelved. Similarly, much of the novelty surrounding the work of ancient Mesopotamia’s merchant-entrepreneurs pertained to distribution, transportation, and finance.

The broader impact of such entrepreneurial initiatives, even when developed by those with no grander ambition than the attainment of another “shekel of private silver,” has often been a matter of contention. The resulting disruptions—from the commercial colonization pioneered by the Phoenician maritime-entrepreneurs to the “flattening” of the world pioneered by American dot-com entrepreneurs—continue to inspire passionate moral arguments both for and against the profit-driven creativity of entrepreneurship.