Economist, July 20, 2013 (III)

choi

(3) Schumpeter | Crazy Diamonds; True entrepreneurs find worth in the worthless and possibility in the impossible.
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... ible-crazy-diamonds

Quote:

“But you do not need to be a geek to be an entrepreneur. George Mitchell, the Texas oilman who pioneered fracking, did as much to change the world as anybody in the [Silicon] Valley. Nor do you need to be a conventional innovator. Miguel Dávila and his colleagues built a huge business by importing the American multiplex cinema into Mexico. Their only innovation, says Mr Dávila, 'was putting lime juice and chili sauce on the popcorn instead of butter.'

"Indeed, some of the best entrepreneurs are distinguished more by their ability to achieve the impossible than by the originality of their thinking.

Professor Daniel "Isenberg has two important bits of advice for policymakers who genuinely want to foster entrepreneurship. First, they should remove barriers to entry, and growth, for all sorts of business, rather than seeking to build particular types of clusters. Second, they should recognise the importance of the profit motive.

“Politicians and bureaucrats do not just confuse entrepreneurship with things they like—technology, small business—they also fail to recognise that it entails things that set their teeth on edge. Entrepreneurs thrive on inequality: the fabulous wealth they generate in America makes the country more unequal. They also thrive on disruption, which creates losers as well as winners. Joseph Schumpeter once argued that economic progress takes place in ‘cracks’ and ‘leaps’ rather than ‘infinitesimal small steps’ because it is driven by rule-breaking entrepreneurs. It might be nice to think that we could have growth and job-creation without a good deal of Schumpeterian cracking. But, alas, some thoughts really are worthless, impossible and stupid.”

My comment:
(a) This article is about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. What distinguish them from others?
(b) Regarding the last sentence of quotation 1, I think that is what Jack Ma and other Internet phenomena in China did.
(c)
(i) Set one's teeth on edge. The Phrase Finder, undated
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/312600.html
(“Literally, to cause an unpleasant tingling of the teeth. More generally, the expression is used to describe any feeling of unpleasant distaste”)
(ii) set someone's teeth on edge: "(especially of an unpleasantly harsh sound) cause someone to feel intense discomfort or irritation <a grating that set her teeth on edge>"
Oxford dictionaries, undated.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/edge
(d) I just tried hard to find “cracks” in Schumpeter’s works. I failed, presumably because his writings were probably in German. The “cracks,” I presume, just mean fissures, left behind by creative destruction.
(e) leapfrogging
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leapfrogging
(based on Joseph Schumpeter's notion of ‘gales of creative destruction’)
(f) Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950; ethnically German [not Jewish]; born in now Czech Republic, then part of Austria-Hungary; In 1932, he moved to the United States, in 1939 he became a US citizen)  Wiki