Entrepreneurship, innovation and the good life: Reflections on Edmund Phelps' mass flourishing

Edmund Phelps, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics, has written a thought-provoking and ambitious book: Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change (Princeton University Press, 2013). The book is laudable for its emphasis on innovation, for its discussion of what constitutes a good life, and Phelps' realization that true life satisfaction cannot be achieved through a mindless quest for money and the goods it can buy. But the overly glossy characterization of the period before WW II as opposed to the post-1980 period, the niggardly evaluation of the European economies, and the lack of empirical indicators actually showing that the rate of innovation has dropped are significant weaknesses. These objections are especially regrettable given the importance of the book's main message: Creative entrepreneurship is not merely the key to economic growth, but to life satisfaction as well.