Prof. Thomas Mccraw Wins Spengler Award For "Best Book In History Of Economics"
Thomas McCraw, the IsidorStraus Professor of Business History Emeritus at Harvard Business School BOSTON — Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction (The Belknap Press, 2007), by Thomas McCraw, the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History Emeritus at Harvard Business School, has been selected by the History of Economics Society as the winner of the Joseph J. Spengler Award for "Best Book in History of Economics" for 2007. The honor will be awarded at the 35th annual conference of the History of Economic Society in June 2008, at York University, in Toronto. Prophet of Innovation is the biography of Harvard Professor Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883 -1950), who made his mark as the prophet of incessant change and is arguably one of the most significant economists and business theorists of the past century. McCraw's book chronicles Schumpter's tumultuous life spanning two world wars, the Great Depression, and the early Cold War. Drawing on all of Schumpeter's writings, including many private intimate diaries and letters never before used, McCraw paints the full portrait of a magnetic figure. As the biography details, Schumpeter regarded "creative destruction" as the driving force of capitalism. In short, it stated that 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. In Schumpeter's view, the general prosperity produced by the "capitalist engine" far outweighs the wreckage it leaves behind. Read the HBS Alumni Bulletin's review of Prophet of Innovation: http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/bulletin/2007/june/schumpeter.html Additional information about the Joseph J. Spengler Prize can be found here: http://historyofeconomics.org/awards/bookaward.htm About Thomas McCraw |
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