When considering your own business, it pays to look at
the broader context, i.e. changes observed in entrepreneurship at the turn of
the 20th and 21st centuries. They will be presented in this section.
Almost a hundred years ago, Prof. Joseph
Schumpeter, the nestor of modern entrepreneurship science, saw the entrepreneur
as the creative destructor, who brings innovations and thus upsets the
existing market structure . However, trends in modern industry branches in the
20th century (automotive, machine, chemical and pharmaceutical industries) did
not support this innovative role of entrepreneurs. Technological progress
took place in large corporations which had the R&D potential, human and
financial resources required to implement high-volume production.
As a result, in the second half of XX century,
entrepreneurship was associated with small business operations in traditional
sectors of the economy. Every morning, when going to the convenience store to
get fresh bread, dairy products and fruit, we appreciate the hard-working
owner, who had to get up much earlier to handle the supply and open the store.
Still, we do not expect him or her to be innovative.
Something started to change towards the end
of the 20th century.Innovative start-ups began to appear, revolutionizing the operation of entire
branches of the economy and threatening large, established corporations. The
flagship examples of that are Microsoft, Apple, Dell or — at a later time —
Google. As a result, at the turn of the 20th and the 21st centuries, the world witnessed
the new face of entrepreneurship. A modern segment of innovative, dynamic
entrepreneurs grew amidst large corporations on one hand and traditional small
businesses on the other.