Prophet of innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and creative destruction

Pan Am, Gimbel's, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland - all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. Creative destruction, he said, is driving force of capitalism. Described by John Kenneth Galbraith as the most sophisticated conservative of 20th Century, Schumpeter made his mark as prophet of incessant change. His vision was stark: Nearly all businesses fail, victims of innovation by their competitors. Businesspeople ignore this lesson at their peril - to survive, they must be entrepreneurial and think strategically. Yet in Schumpeter's view, general prosperity produced by capitalist engine far outweighs wreckage it leaves behind. During a tumultuous life spanning two world wars, Great Depression, and early Cold War, Schumpeter reinvented himself many times. From boy wonder in turn-of-the-century Vienna to captivating Harvard professor, he was stalked by tragedy and haunted by spectre of his rival, John Maynard Keynes. By 1983 - centennial of birth of both men - Forbes christened Schumpeter, not Keynes, best navigator through turbulent seas of globalization. Time has proved that assessment accurate. Prophet of Innovation is also private story of a man rescued repeatedly by women who loved him and put his well-being above their own. Without them, he would likely have perished, so fierce were conflicts between his reason and his emotions. Drawing on all of Schumpeter's writings, including many intimate diaries and letters never before used, this biography paints full portrait of a magnetic figure who aspired to become world's greatest economist, lover, and horseman - and admitted to failure only with horses.