capitalist_and_entrepreneur_klein

v
Conversely, the entrepreneur is only paid when the market accepts his
or her product. If the market rejects the product, the entrepreneur is not
only not rewarded, but most times will lose capital that had been saved
previously and was invested in the idea and production. As Kauffman
explained, “e odds were strongly against me when I started. ere were
two or three thousand pharmaceutical businesses started after World War
II, and only three ever really succeeded.”
As vital as entrepreneurship and the firm are to the working of the
market and lives of virtually all working men and women, most schools
of economic thought are silent on the subject. Even the work that has
been done is incomplete and contradictory. Economists can’t even agree
on what entrepreneurship is or what exactly entrepreneurs like the late
Ewing Kauffman do. And the apparatus that facilitates the manifestation
of the entrepreneurial vision—the firm—is but a “black box” where inputs
enter and outputs emerge, like so much magic.
But like so many market phenomena that modern economics chooses
to ignore or get wrong, an Austrian economist has entered the black box,
examining its contents for a better understanding of not only what entrepreneurs
are, but what they do and why they do it. Peter G. Klein has
devoted his entire career to understanding the entrepreneur and the firm,
bringing a distinctive Austrian approach to the problem while drawing
from what all schools of thought have to contribute.
is book contains the fruit of Dr. Klein’s labors. And while the majority
of the book was taken from articles appearing in academic journals, this
book should not only be read by students and academics. Klein provides
valuable insight that business owners and managers will find useful. As
heroic as the entrepreneur may appear or thoughtful as the manager may
seem, they don’t operate in a vacuum. Often they have no one to talk to
and nothing to keep them in check but their own egos, which in many
cases offers no check at all but the opposite.
e yearning for knowledge in this area is considerable. Considerable
space at most any bookstore is provided for the many and varied management
books. ere are nearly as many different management books offered
as diet books, with each genre being as faddish as the next. Management
theorists crank out a continual stream of books full of business advice that
“readers find unreadable,” writes e Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge, “and
managers find unmanageable.”