Talk:Creative destruction

Comment

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The entire passage in "Origin" needs to be changed - leave Goethe out here, he was never influenced by Indian thought, whatsoever. I would suggest the following: "It has been argued that Sombart's formulation of the concept was also influenced by Eastern mysticism, specifically the image of the Hindu god Shiva, who is presented in the paradoxical aspect of simultaneous destroyer and creator.[1] Conceivably this influence passed from Johann Gottfried Herder, who brought Hindu thought to German philosophy in his Philosophy of Human History (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit) (Herder 1790–92), specifically volume III, pp. 41–64.[1] via Arthur Schopenhauer and the Orientalist Friedrich Maier through Friedrich Nietzsche's writings."

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by HMRothe (talk • contribs) 17:20, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

"Let us hope that a new generation of textbooks emerges soon: it is bound to creatively destroy the old." Bit POV, no? --68.55.216.65 18:43, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC) "Just as older behemoths perceived to be juggernauts by their contemporaries (e.g., Montgomery Ward, FedMart, Woolworths) were eventually undone by nimbler and more innovative competitors, Wal-Mart faces the same threat. Just as the cassette tape replaced the 8-track, only to be replaced in turn by the compact disc, itself being undercut by MP3 players, the seemingly dominant Wal-Mart may well find itself an antiquated company of the past. This is the process of creative destruction."

Yes, we see how Walmart is threatened by this process, but by what new innovative competitors exactly? Does the growing "Green" business and business standards movement have anything to do with this? Or the growing awareness/vocality of the importance of supporting local economies? We can't just say Walmart's threatened and leave out its predators...but the kind of foresight required for this might be beyond fact citing and more conjecture? But conjecture is imperative for good discourse.

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Where's the bit about Karl Marx come from? That sounds like it needs a citation.

Seems like a bit of a jump to go from Bakunin and Nietzsche straight into a discussion of business cycles. Also a bit of a let-down, there must be scope for a deeper philosophical exposition of the concept. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.38.42.167 (talk) 08:47, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

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I am no expert here so I won't edit this article. However, I just observed that this article states that Schumpeter belongs to the Austrian School, while the main article about Schumpeter remains silent on this point (except for the note in the end that states that Schumpeter was *associated* with the movement). This is remarkable, as both the Dutch (my native tongue) and German version explicitly *deny* that Schumpeter was part of the school. What should it be here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.120.212.183 (talk) 14:18, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

First Introduced?

This article says Schumpeter "first introduced" the phrase but the article on him says he "borrowed" it.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:00, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I have the same question as Mr. Upland. Will someone correct the creative destruction page or Schumpter's page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.250.162.248 (talk) 05:07, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Aronradix (talk) 08:38, 25 October 2010 (UTC) I would note here that "creative destruction" as conceptualized by Schumpeter differs from the concept formulated by the Sombart quote in the article. Sombart's conceptualization here is a reformulation of the "broken windows" fallacy. What Schumpeter is talking about is very different: the creation comes first. This is a completely different concept. Rather than breaking the window and thus (fallaciously) leading to economic growth, Schumpeter's entrepreneur introduces to the market a superior substitute for the window, which eventually puts the window makers out of business.

Hungarian?

Elsewhere I read that Schumpeter was born in Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic. Yes, it may have been part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire at some point in time - but so was most of Europe. Rbakels (talk) 08:20, 25 March 2010 (UTC) Only his stepfather was hungarian, but otherwise he has no connection to Hungary, so let us eleminate the false information! Steve Ponddigger 10:38, 30 March 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.223.215.177 (talk)

Polaroid is the wrong illustration

I feel like using the newly-revived Polaroid camera as an example of creative destruction is not the strongest illustration we could be using here. What about an image of something that got genuinely obsoleted. The telegraph for example. Lot 49a^talk 22:18, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Insufficient Discussion re: Wal-Mart decline / Theory and Examples section

"Just as older behemoths perceived to be juggernauts by their contemporaries (e.g., Montgomery Ward, FedMart, Woolworths) were eventually undone by nimbler and more innovative competitors, Wal-Mart faces the same threat. Just as the cassette tape replaced the 8-track, only to be replaced in turn by the compact disc, itself being undercut by MP3 players, the seemingly dominant Wal-Mart may well find itself an antiquated company of the past. This is the process of creative destruction."

This is insufficient in my mind. "By way of example" it selects an existing large corporate entity and asserts, with no explanation, that its success as a going concern is at risk, simply because other firms or technologies (similar in? industry? size? organization? history?) have failed (even if the firms listed failed and relinquished market share to Wal-Mart, the random selection of technologies is otherwise irrelevant except to explain the basic concept by analogy). Using a empirical example of this process in more detail would certainly improve identifying any given entity and asserting its vulnerability to this process simply because this process has been identified elsewhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.243.18.43 (talk) 02:55, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Biases?

The authorship of this article occasionally seems to introduce a bias in the reading of creative destruction. That is, at times word choice seems to imply that creative destruction is good and other times seems to imply that creative destruction is bad--merely by word choice (e.g., calling the person who is "creatively destroying" a business a "corporate raider" rather than just a business man, seems to imply a bias suggesting that "creative destruction" is, from a value judgment perspective, bad). Also, I think the Hegel reference is quite a stretch--although, I may be wrong as I am not a Hegel scholar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.114.102.31 (talk) 00:37, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Marxist, not Schumpeterian

This article is virtually useless for most of the people who will be using it. The primary readers of this page are likely to be business and economics students looking to get an overview of the Schumpeterian model of Creative Destruction. Instead they are bombarded with a lot of Neo-Marxist philosophy based on Sombart's use of the term in a broken-widows style fallacy. This article should be completely re-written from the Schumpeterian point of view, with the Marxist elements added as an "Other interpretations" section" Aronradix (talk) 14:28, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Agree, the article is not balanced as information and the way information is given to the reader, in such way it forms an obvious bias, I can see the edits that contributed to it, I think the article is a candidate for {{Unbalanced}} top template. --Aleksd (talk) 10:31, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

And to be more concrete the edits are major due to Marxist Greek editors (they seem to need to tell us something, I'd like to know what exactly). --Aleksd (talk) 10:39, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I have to disagree! Have any of you actually read Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy? It discusses Marx in detail: the whole of Part I is devoted to a detailed interpretation of Marx’s thought! Sorry if that’s news to you, but it’s ludicrous to argue that the article is biased because it gives the back history to a concept Schumpeter himself got from Marx (and of course elaborated). Since when does Wikipedia only dole out knowledge that MBA students think they might need? We’re not an MBA textbook. The fact is, like it or not, that Schumpeter didn’t invent the concept himself. The term has a history, and Wikipedia needs to represent concepts historically and globally, not from the perspective of Anglo-Saxon/neoliberal business models. Therefore it’s only right that the article should follow a rough historical order and deal with the economic origins of the concept before it goes on to deal with Schumpeter’s use (which is not its primary use in fields such as geography, political economy, anthropology and cultural studies). If you find the article needs to say more about Schumpeter, then flesh out the sections on Schumpeter, but don’t attack it because it gives an historical overview of the concept. Those MBA students looking for information on Schumpeter might learn a thing or two. Oh, and by the way, I’m British, not Greek (OK, I’m half-Greek), and I can assure you that my edits here have nothing at all to do with the crisis of capitalism in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, USA, etc., though Schumpeter would have said “I told you so”! I’m also not a Marxist, and in case you hadn’t heard, the Cold War is over. Marx is no longer taboo, but is widely considered a serious analyst of the mechanisms of capitalism in academia (as he was by Schumpeter). Therefore, I do not believe the article is unbalanced, although it would be if it were only about Schumpeter’s interpretation of the concept as Aronradix wants it to be! GKantaris (talk) 16:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)