Why Schumpeter has had so little influence on today’s main line economics, and why this may be changing

While Schumpeter’s broad theory of how capitalist economies worked articulated in his Theory of Economic Development received strong attention in his lifetime, it was neoclassical economic theory that took hold of the profession in the last half of the twentieth century, and today few economists even read Schumpeter. The first part of this essay considers the reasons why Schumpeter largely has been ignored. However, recent developments have increased the interests of economists in innovation and in innovation driven economic activity, and the time now may be ripe for a renaissance of Schumpeterian economics. The second part of this essay provides a sketch of what an economics text-book, written from a Schumpeterian perspective, might look like.