ENTREPRENEURSHIP
VOL. 4, NO. 5, PGS. 8–14

ESPAÑOL

Not All Entrepreneurship is Productive
A conversation with Magnus Henrekson

This interview was conducted by Javier Toro.

Magnus Henrekson is Director of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics. He is a coauthor of The Entrepreneurial Society: A Reform Strategy for the European Union.

Is all entrepreneurial activity productive? What is productive entrepreneurship?

The entrepreneurial inclination is something that is part of the human character. Of course, some people are more natural entrepreneurs than others, but the entrepreneurial spirit is in all of us. Whether entrepreneurship is productive depends on whether you create value not only for yourself but also for society. Say, for example, you have created a pharmaceutical drug that can save millions of lives. Selling that drug will make you rich, but a lot of people will also benefit from it, from being able to get it. Even if you become super-rich, you will only get a very small fraction, which is usually less than five percent, of the whole value that has been created by selling that drug. The rest goes to society: people get better new products or existing products at a lower price. Productive entrepreneurship has to do with doing something your country, the legal system of your country, has decided it is good for society. Let’s suppose you produce a fantastic whisky that everyone wants to buy. In western countries, producing and selling that whisky is considered to be a valuable activity. But in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries, it is not. In these countries, alcohol is banned. Entrepreneurship can occur in political environments too. In that case, productive entrepreneurship occurs when, for example, politicians pass laws that make the country prosper.

If you do something that is not good for society, then you can become a destructive entrepreneur, that is, someone who destroys value. You can become very rich, but you harm society. Destructive entrepreneurship demands a lot of entrepreneurial talent, nonetheless. To be successful, you have to learn, for example, how to avoid the police.

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COMMENTS
Mperez(unimet)
14/09/2020
Gracias Juanvi por tu referencia, es importante
Mperez(unimet)
07/09/2020
MPerez (unimet)
Es importante analizar, en términos de los emprendimientos productivos y no productivo, que se estimula en entornos sociales de pobreza
Rafael (UNIMET)
07/09/2020
Para Schumpeter la clave para el Desarrollo de un país es el emprendedor, en realidad él se refería al empresario, definicdo como el agente económico que introduce una innovación. Ese autor diferenciava claramente al emprensario/emprendedor de otros roles como capitalista, director de producción, gerente, financista.
La diferenciación entre la innovación (emprendimiento) productiva y el improductiva e incluso destructiva la estableció William Baumol en su artículo de 1990, referido por Juanvi en la nota anterior. El emprendimiento debe entenderse como la creación de empresas (unidades de negocios) innovadoras, no se puede diferenciar del tema grueso de la economía empresarial
Juanvi
06/09/2020
Interesante artículo en el que se pone de manifiesto que no todo emprendimiento es constructivo. Importante concepto en contraste al uso mitificado del concepto de emprendimiento. Echo en falta la referencia a Will Baumol que en su artículo de 1990:"Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive"introdujo pioneramente esta idea.

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