Technical Change and Entrepreneurship: An Overview from Cantillon to Schumpeter

This chapter deals with aspects of technical change and entrepreneurship which have dominated the economics literature. Since we shall confine our attention to the economic aspects of technical change, our approach is one-sided. This is reinforced by the fact that we discuss only a part of the very large body of literature. The tension between wants and the means to satisfy these is directly influenced by technical change, both from a qualitative and a quantitative point of view. This relationship between scarcity and technical change has been studied in detail since the 1970s, although elements have always been part of economic debate ( Heertje, 1977 ).