Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) was the conscience of his profession, questioning the relevancy of an equilibrium-only approach for understanding business competition and economic growth. Schumpeter was a methodological realist interested in the actual workings of capitalism, what he called capitalist reality. He also had a contrarian streak. He claimed allegiance to no school of thought and even feared becoming the orthodoxy himself. “When I see those who espouse my cause,” he averred, “I begin to wonder about the validity of my position.” Schumpeter’s theory of capitalist development centered upon the entrepreneur, a “swashbuckling … quasi-heroic” figure who disrupted routines and forged a new menu for consumers. Innovation was less about economizing within a known framework than about creating wholly new vistas. More here