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Synonyms

Economic dynamics; Entrepreneurial economy; Entrepreneurship financing; Innovation

Intellectual Roots of the Concept

Creative destruction refers to the phenomenon of economic change through the creation of new ways of doing things that endogenously destroy and replace the old ways. It is assumed that new products and new processes are the main source of the capitalist economy’s development. The term “creative destruction” is usually used to emphasize the dynamic nature of the modern economic system and is more readily thought as a positive evolutionary process. Thus it can be regarded as the conceptual roots of the modern innovation economics.

Creative destruction is originally derived from Marxist economic theory (The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, 1848, Grundrisse of Marx, 1857, and Das Capital, 1863), which brought to the forefront the capitalist processes of destroying and reconfiguring previous economic structures. This approach argued that the capitalist...

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Correspondence to Faruk Ulgen .

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Ulgen, F. (2017). Creative Destruction. In: Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6616-1_407-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6616-1_407-2

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