Counternarrating entrepreneurship

Abstract

Schumpeter envisioned entrepreneurship research as a way to examine and understand how capitalism changes. This notwithstanding, contemporary entrepreneurship studies predominantly explore the emergence and growth of new business firms, thus adopting a view that assumes a positive macro-level role for entrepreneurship in society even as it neglects the destructivity which was key to Schumpeter’s theory. To bring capitalism back into entrepreneurship, we suggest a narrative approach to entrepreneurial history. Specifically, we introduce counternarratives to discuss new ways of thinking about the micro-macro linkage in entrepreneurship and to open up fresh understandings of creative destruction within, and beyond, capitalism. We conclude the paper with practical suggestions for new entrepreneurial histories that develop alternative narratives.

Keywords:

• Entrepreneurship
• history
• capitalism
• theory
• narratives
• creative destruction
• Schumpeter

Introduction

As Schumpeter (1942) expounds, ‘the problem that is usually being visualised is how capitalism administers existing structures, whereas the relevant problem is how it creates and destroys them. As long as this is not recognised, the investigator does a meaningless job. As soon as it is recognised, his outlook on capitalist practice and its social results changes considerably’ (p. 84). In order to realise this vision, historical investigations into the relationship between entrepreneurship and capitalism are needed (Wadhwani, 2012). However, the predominant focus in contemporary entrepreneurship studies has been on how market opportunities are exploited, as well as on the process of starting up a business (Ramoglou & Gartner, 2022). Acknowledging the lack of attention to entrepreneurship’s stake in historical change, recent scholarship has sought to stage a historical critique of the entrepreneurship literature’s preoccupation with individual and firm-level analyses (Wadhwani et al., 2020).

This critique lies at the heart of this paper. Our broad aim is to contribute to the reinvention of historical entrepreneurship studies, which stresses the connections and interplay of entrepreneurial processes and historical change (Wadhwani & Lubinski, 2017). Cleaving to Schumpeter’s vision that the willpower and imaginative capacities of individuals is crucial to capitalist transformations, we focus on entrepreneurship’s societal emplotment (Wadhwani & Decker, 2017; Wadhwani, 2010). Hence, in this paper we re-envision ‘new entrepreneurial history’ as the study of the ongoing dialectic of creation and destruction (Wadhwani, 2012).

Schumpeter’s visionary contribution was to think of creative destruction as capitalism’s inner modus operandi, and entrepreneurship as the transformative principle attributable to individual-level phenomena that makes it observable (Schumpeter, 1947a, 1949). Attending to entrepreneurship would then enable the theoretical exploration and explication of macro-societal transformations both within and beyond capitalism (Schumpeter, 1942); and for this endeavour, historical research was viewed as central (Fredona & Reinert, 2017). However, this historical vision for entrepreneurial studies has largely been replaced by a managerial focus on the construction and development of new business enterprises. Such a focus often emphasises the individual level yet refrains from connecting this to more comprehensive societal transformations. Furthermore, it foregrounds creativity at the cost of ignoring destructivity. To enrich the scene, historically oriented scholars have made the important call to embrace Schumpeter’s seminal insights so as to understand entrepreneurship more clearly as a fundamental source of change (Wadhwani et al., 2020).

We seek to answer this call by introducing a narrative approach to entrepreneurial history, which, in Hansen’s (2012) words, enables us to ‘increase our understanding of capitalism at both the micro and macro levels’ (pp. 700–701). The principal assumption that propels our paper is that a narrative approach to entrepreneurial history synchronises explanations of individual and societal-level change.

Our specific narrative approach is to counternarrate entrepreneurship research. Following Mordhorst’s model, a counternarrative is an alternative explanation that challenges dominant assumptions, thereby enabling new perspectives to flourish and, ultimately, contribute to highlighting and improving theory (Mordhorst, 2008). Consequently, we also presume that a counternarrative approach can provide the means to evaluate and question the reasoning that informs entrepreneurship studies’ contemporary focus on business expansion—which we refer to as ‘entrepreneurialism’—and therefore help generate richer and more variegated explanations of transformations within and, at least speculatively, beyond capitalism.

Our contribution proceeds as follows. We begin with a historical elaboration of the research motive, summarising Schumpeter’s entrepreneurial narrative and, specifically, how attention has veered away from exploring entrepreneurial history to entrepreneurialism. We subsequently identify narrative historical reasoning as pivotal to rekindling entrepreneurial research’s promise for analysing capitalism and bringing forth alternatives to entrepreneurialism. We then harness a counternarrative research strategy to reconstruct the tacit narrative of entrepreneurialism, and proceed by explaining the dominant emphasis on business creation and the lack of destruction. We conclude by suggesting that historical entrepreneurship studies proffer alternative perspectives and, specifically, re-envision entrepreneurship as capitalism’s creative-destructive engine.

Research motive

Schumpeter’s entrepreneurial narrative

Schumpeter was primarily interested in theorising capitalism as a constantly changing socioeconomic system (Schumpeter, 1947b). He was especially intrigued by capitalism’s ability to generate creative responses to changes in the socioeconomic conditions of its very existence (Schumpeter, 1947a). To bring forth a novel theoretical expression of this system, he stressed the importance of the willpower and imagination of individuals in reacting to and producing historical change, arguing that capitalism both encourages such behaviour and desperately needs it in order to retain its vitality (Schumpeter, 1942). In Schumpeter’s vision, the locus of behaviours leading to historical transformations both within and beyond capitalism is entrepreneurship. In a nutshell, capitalism relies on entrepreneurship in order to remain alive and in motion. Paradoxically, for Schumpeter entrepreneurship was also the reason why capitalism would not prevail forever.

In 2022, Schumpeter remains a widely cited scholar popularised as a founding father of entrepreneurial research. However, instead of inspiring new investigations into creative and destructive impulses in history, entrepreneurship research has turned its attention to the creation of new business enterprises and the nexus of individuals and market opportunities. In the following, we present a brief historical account of how entrepreneurialism has engulfed Schumpeter’s entrepreneurial narrative.

The rise of ‘entrepreneurialism’

Historical investigations by Hoselitz and Landström, for instance, suggest that entrepreneurship is rooted in mediaeval rural France, where literal identities were needed to characterise people who ‘got things done’ (Hoselitz, 1951; Landström, 1999). Europe at that time is commonly understood to have been dominated by religious thought; in this context, a prototypical entrepreneur may have been a cleric or monk in charge of building a new castle or church. Alternatively, monasteries that invented new agricultural techniques (White, 1964), generated new trading networks (Collins, 1997), or organised themselves more efficiently than other contemporary market actors could be seen to have acted as entrepreneurs (Kieser, 1987).

The economic role played by entrepreneurship received more attention during the early modern era (Schumpeter, 2004). As Hoselitz (1951) notes, in line with initial mediaeval understandings entrepreneurship was mostly associated with architecture and engineering. In this newer and more precise conception, entrepreneurs (in English at the time called ‘undertakers’ or ‘merchant adventurers’) were landed gentry who took on financial risk by entering into contractual obligations with owners of capital to provide a buyer (usually the state) with services, such as new buildings, weaponry, or workforce (Hoselitz, 1951).

Theoretical interest in entrepreneurship was first expressed by the French economist Richard Cantillon, who argued that entrepreneurship consists of buying a good at a certain price without guarantees of the price for which that good can be resold—in other words, for Cantillon entrepreneurship was the economic location of risk-bearing. Here, risk arose not from sudden bursts of unpredictable business but rather from the novel notion that the economy should be conceived of as a circular system of in- and outflows (Schumpeter, 2004). This idea was crucially connected to the Physiocratic school of economics, which emphasised agriculture as a source of value (as opposed to the later, and especially Marxist, emphasis on industrialism) (Schumpeter, 1954). The recurrent phases of tillage, sowing, and harvesting in agriculture round out this cyclical vision for economics.

Although the Austro-American economist Joseph Schumpeter was hardly an agrarian thinker, this notion of cyclicality was a foundational insight for him. As Swedberg (1991) notes,  ‘Schumpeter saw the Physiocrats […] as the true founders of economics. Their most important contribution was the idea that one can conceptualise the economy as a giant circular flow, where demand and supply always follow upon each other’ (p. 42). Adhering to the Physiocratic idea of a circular economy, Schumpeter (1942) described capitalism as a constantly evolving economic system of creative destruction, implying that things are done in new ways which render old ways obsolete, subsequently leading to their disappearance from the economic scene. Capitalism emphasises creative destruction, and in alternate systems entrepreneurship is less pronounced (Schumpeter, 1947a).

Inquiry into entrepreneurship gained prominence at the Harvard Business School, and especially its Research Centre in Entrepreneurial History, where Schumpeter investigated economic theory and history in the late 1940s, culminating in ‘the full emergence of the figure of the ‘entrepreneur’, conceived of as an ambiguous and potent force of creative destruction, and of entrepreneurship as business history’s pre-eminent and vital dynamic’ (Fredona & Reinert, 2017, p. 268). However, for Schumpeter (2004) ‘the entrepreneur’ does not characterise a particular person or business so much as action that is central to capitalism. Insofar as Schumpeter ventured to differentiate entrepreneurs from other people, it was through their characteristic of social mobility: ‘We may say that entrepreneurs do in the end land in the capitalist class, at first as a rule in its most active sector until they wind up in its less active and finally its decaying sector’ (Schumpeter, 2004, p. 268).

In Landström’s (1999) words, after Schumpeter attention ‘moved further away from trying to explain entrepreneurship towards developing entrepreneurship. For example, in the 1950s, the availability of entrepreneurial ability was considered a vital factor in economic development. After World War II, it was important to stimulate individuals to start businesses and get development in society under way’ (p. 12). Work by economists such as William Baumol (1996), whose historical examples suggested that the destructive sides of entrepreneurship could be mitigated and its productivity harnessed under the right conditions, was pivotal to this reformulation of entrepreneurship studies. Moving away from analyses of capitalism, entrepreneurship came to be studied in capitalism in order to identify and encourage entrepreneurial skills and traits (Gartner, 1988).

Gradually the core focus of entrepreneurship studies shifted from explaining capitalist reality to building and sustaining business. This transformation occurred in conjunction with the ‘end’ of (Soviet) communism as a legitimate alternative to global capitalism and stimulated the development of a new fixation on business performance (Tedmanson et al., 2012). Today, entrepreneurship researchers are by and large called upon to focus on new business, rather than to provide insight into capitalist dynamics. For example, a recent editorial in the Journal of Business Venturing appealed for concentrating on ‘new value creation, new venture creation, opportunity identification, evaluation, and exploitation, ideation and innovation, emergence, new organising and entry, innovation in established firms, and firm growth and exit, to name only a few’ (McMullen, 2019, p. 414). Nevertheless, it is striking that so little attention is paid to societal or economic change—precisely the issues that were integral to Schumpeter’s work and that of the pioneers of historical entrepreneurship studies (Fredona & Reinert, 2017).

This shift can be better appreciated once we turn our attention to the purposes of entrepreneurship research since the late 1980s and the onset of the field’s maturation process into its contemporary form (McMullen, 2019). By adopting the early emphasis on innovations and turning this into a creed in its own right, an early executive of the Journal of Business Venturing formulated the journal’s goal as encouraging ‘the essential American habit of building the better mousetrap’ (Reagan, 1985, p. 1). This habit demanded sacrifices: ‘many engineers were hurt or even killed by boiler explosions and poor track. When we were refining the automobile some 90 years ago, arms, jaws, and backs were broken by crankshafts that attacked their owners’ (ibid., p. 2). Nonetheless, by urging readers ‘to imagine what our country will be like in the 2020s’ (ibid., p. 2), the idea was for ‘entrepreneurialism’ to provide a tinkering, experimental, decentralised, and even ‘miraculous’ business culture in the interest of ‘inventing the world of tomorrow’ (ibid., p. 3).

It is noteworthy that the rise of ‘entrepreneurialism’ has coincided with fading interest in exposing the linkages between entrepreneurship and capitalism. This is all the more puzzling in light of Schumpeter’s continued importance as an intellectual forefather of contemporary entrepreneurship studies and the centrality (or even orthodoxy, as Goss suggests) of his ideas in entrepreneurship research (Goss, 2005). Despite the omnipresence of Schumpeter on the pages of entrepreneurship journals, it is only recently that entrepreneurship’s ‘destructive side’ has been reidentified (Shepherd, 2019). We maintain that it is through historical work that the less convenient facets of entrepreneurship can be shown to be rooted in the principle of creative destruction (Wadhwani, 2012). In the following section, we contribute to this agenda by focussing on how narrative tools can be used to give shape to historical entrepreneurship studies’ object of interest.

Narrative historical reasoning

In contrast to entrepreneurialism, historical entrepreneurship research aims at linking individual behaviour with broader societal changes (Wadhwani & Lubinski, 2017). One way to achieve this is to develop new engagements with the narrative of the entrepreneur as creator of the new and destroyer of the old (Brattström & Wennberg, 2021). This research strategy emphasises the interplay between events in the past, and the historian as a narrator of those events (Mordhorst & Schwarzkopf, 2017). Narrative approaches specifically aim to encompass understandings of how reasoning unfolds, to suspend prejudice, and make explicit the process by which a piece of writing becomes a legitimate sample of history (Popp & Fellman, 2017). As such, the value of a narrative approach is to provide clarity on the basic theoretical assumptions that guide empirical research on the one hand, and generating riveting expressions about the past on the other (Carr, 1991; Ricoeur, 1984). Narrative historical reasoning in entrepreneurship research therefore helps express how and why certain actions and types of behaviour lead to historical change.

Narrative reasoning involves increased attention to the relationship between events in the past and narratives about them, and particularly the role played by narratives in the production of history. Hayden White (1980) reminds us that real events ‘do not offer themselves as stories’ (p. 8). Instead of considering plot as being indigenous to historical sources, White argues that narrative is a secondary addition devised by historical writers in order to embellish disconnected archival fragments with connective tissue that enables a coherent expression of a meaningful totality. For White (1984) this totality is imaginary yet nevertheless functions as the key element by which to achieve closure. Since imagination has been considered antithetical to both serious history and social science, the role of narrative in writing has been concealed: ‘the plot of a historical narrative is always an embarrassment and has to be presented as ‘found’ in the events rather than put there by narrative techniques’ (White, 1980, p. 24)

Mordhorst and Schwarzkopf (2017) have pointed out that White’s concerns regarding narrativity have not been taken up by the field of business history: ‘Having paid relatively little attention to narrative structures and the act of narrating makes business history a latecomer compared not only to ‘mainstream’ history, but also compared to virtually all other disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences that have undergone their respective ‘narrative turns’’ (p. 1157). However, Mordhorst and Schwarzkopf (2017) acknowledge that ‘business historians are beginning to show greater commitment to and interest in the idea of the narrative as both the method and the end-product of the historian’s craft’ (p. 1166). In this context, Popp and Fellman (2017) suggest that narratives should neither be trivialised nor devalued but appreciated as an integral element of business historians’ craft.

Crucially, and as Mordhorst and Schwarzkopf (2017) carefully note, narratives reduce complexity and, therefore, enable broader and more diverse audiences to engage with the literature (Hansen, 2012). In the words of philosopher David Carr (2008), narratives satisfy, and more often than not people will cease looking for answers once a coherent sequence of events is presented. In this sense narrative resolves puzzlement by establishing an easily grasped, causal pattern between prior and present circumstances; and, through such emplotment, principal motives underlying events can be discerned. Carr (1991) posits that ‘narrative coherence belongs to even the most elementary experience of action, that it is an essential structural feature of the very fact of having an experience or performing an action’ (p. 88). In other words, narratives do not begin at the writer’s desk but are deeply ingrained within the human experience of being in the world. A similar view is embraced by Ricoeur (1984), for whom narrativity is essentially a portrayal of temporal experience, that is, of  ‘time becoming human time’ (p. 3). The lesson here is to appreciate the explanatory value of narrative by considering them genuine and even essential features of historical writing, which provides individuals with an understanding of the object of inquiry.

While the importance of understanding narrativity has been discussed in the broader business historical literature, historical entrepreneurship studies have yet to embrace narrative approaches. Hence, we proceed to propose two fundamental assumptions for narrative historical reasoning and how it can advance historical entrepreneurship studies.

First, narrative is inherent to historical reasoning (Hansen, 2012), and therefore a crucial analytical tool for studying entrepreneurial phenomena. Narrative forms are used in a reflexive manner in order to establish causally linked sequences of events, while acknowledging that they are ‘imposed’ upon historical phenomena by those who write history. Given the explanatory power of narratives, the narrative acts of researchers are brought to the fore. In this way, through narrativity, historical reason becomes emphasised as a set of contextually embedded and performative activities.

Narrative historical reasoning has played an important part in advancing our understanding of entrepreneurship, even if this is rarely acknowledged. For instance, Fredona and Reinert breathe life into the Harvard Research Centre in Entrepreneurial History by illuminating the intellectual scene and interpersonal relationships of the economic theorists and historians who defined the first wave of research focussed on entrepreneurship, while also weaving a powerful image of entrepreneurship as an undogmatic, ambiguous, and even irrational economic narrative (Fredona & Reinert, 2017). A different example of narrative historical reasoning is found in Reinert and Reinert’s work on the cultural and philosophical backdrop to creative destruction, which likens Schumpeter’s theory of entrepreneurship to Nietzsche’s genealogical approach to philosophy, as well as to mythological examples of similar principles, such as the Phoenix bird and the Hindu godhead Shiva (Reinert & Reinert, 2006). Weiskopf and Steyaert (2009) use the narrative form of parable to develop an alternative vision of entrepreneurship as metamorphosis, countering the linear visions of progress that dominate the field. Popp and Holt (2013) use micro-historical narratives to re-enact entrepreneurship in the past as a lived experience; and by doing this they encourage a shift from the predominant focus on opportunities within entrepreneurship studies towards an understanding of entrepreneurship as an imaginative act. All of these works make use of narrativity to make deep incisions into the essence of entrepreneurial research and relate entrepreneurship to broader societal contexts.

These examples alert us to how narratives function as creative syntheses of historical sources and theoretical insights. Narrative, in the sense discussed above, is therefore a useful tool for challenging theoretical explanations that have been taken for granted and largely gone unchallenged. As Wadhwani and Decker (2017) point out, narrative construction is a historical practice that helps scholars re-envision theoretical explanations—that is, engage in ‘a constant re-seeing or re-interpretation of the past’ (p. 115)—and to highlight the role of the researcher in ‘reconsidering the relevance of the past from the perspective of the evolving present’ (p. 115). By considering historical reasoning as a narrative enterprise, the development of new, surprising, or alternative perspectives are encouraged in order to make way for new and/or improved theory.

The second, and perhaps more critical, assumption we make is that new narratives can enter into relations with earlier narratives. Maclean et al. (2017) have suggested that it is important to articulate alternative historical accounts, such as the experiences of disenfranchised actors or overlooked events, in order to ‘avoid falling into the trap of extending narrative imperialism’ (p. 1231). A double logic pertains to narrative historical reasoning: while narratives open up space for new perspectives, they can also fortify already predominant perspectives, enforce premature consensus, and create barriers to unorthodox thinking. In this sense, narrative historical reasoning is uniquely positioned to advocate the questioning of established knowledge within historical fields of inquiry (such as entrepreneurship), to inquire into the types of meta-narratives upon which they feed, and to propose the possibility of dissident narratives (Lubinski, 2018). Such critical narrative strategies can advance historical understanding by highlighting how, in the words of Wadhwani and Decker (2017), ‘historical knowledge advances through the evaluation of competing narratives about the past by a community of researchers’ (p. 123).

New narratives that question older, and imagine new, forms of entrepreneurship have been crucial in advancing understandings of entrepreneurial processes, as well as how they relate to broader societal issues and themes. For example, Kibler et al. (2022) have examined entrepreneurial narratives produced by North Korean students to illustrate how future imaginations can challenge the established institutions and societal meanings of entrepreneurship in a planned economy. Laird (2017) has explored how a change in the narrative of the ‘self-made man’ has turned American entrepreneurs from community-serving Puritans into social Darwinists who simultaneously campaign for state support and public esteem. Here, Laird calls for business history to ‘attack directly’ such hypocrisy in order to create a balance in more realistic narratives about the role of social capital, community, and exploitative practices and, hence, to explain ‘how business and politics really work’ (pp. 1211–1212). Numerous management scholars, too, have sought to challenge what they deem a bias towards heroic individuals and the neglect of more structural and/or demand-based analyses. For instance, by analysing how the Danish government employed a ‘saviour-narrative’ in the context of entrepreneurship when reporting on Denmark’s creative potential, Sørensen (2008) pressed researchers to ‘acknowledge the metaphysico-theological or mythopoetic origin […] of the theory that has created the entrepreneur’ (p. 90). David Boje, who is well known among management scholars for his narrative work, has countered the stories and imagery surrounding celebrity businessmen to show how societal and organisational discourses are retained that uphold notions of entrepreneurial capitalism (as opposed to capitalist capitalism) (Boje & Smith, 2010). A further provocative example is provided by Jones and Spicer (2009) study of the Marquis de Sade (the original ‘sadist’) as an entrepreneur, which alerts entrepreneurship researchers to become more aware of how they identify entrepreneurs and how their identification procedures are politically underpinned.

As these examples show, narrative research strategies can bring to the surface surprising but valuable viewpoints. Mordhorst (2008) has advocated for more counternarrative work to be conducted in order to tip the balance towards plurality and uncover the reasons why specific narratives may attain hegemonic status. Even if entrepreneurship studies’ presumed immaturity and lack of unity is a matter for concern to some (McMullen, 2019), narratives outside of the mainstream can formulate concerns over the basic assumptions underlying the role of entrepreneurship in society and the economy, in particular in regard to the lack of attention paid to how larger questions are overshadowed by the predominant views held on business creation. Following Tedmanson et al. (2012), there is an urgent need to ‘re-locate business within society, not continue to reify business as social life’ (p. 532). As Laird (2017) and others have pointed out, business history, as a narrative endeavour, is uniquely able to promote this ‘critical move’ within entrepreneurship studies. The past is replete with proto-narrative material that should provoke a critical reappraisal of the glorification of new business as societal driver—for instance, the slave trade, or the systematic repression of women and people of colour in the workplace—yet that are seldom considered in the literature and call for more inclusive notions of entrepreneurship (Bakker & McMullen, 2023). It is easy to agree with Ogbor’s (2000) notion that ‘the concept of entrepreneurship seems to be discriminatory, gender-biased, ethnocentrically determined and ideologically controlled’ (p. 629).

In sum, narrative historical reasoning is well positioned not only to tie together theory and history but also to proffer a better understanding of the origins of entrepreneurialism and address how a research focus on entrepreneurship can lead to broader concerns regarding societal transformations.

Counternarrating entrepreneurialism

We continue to follow Mordhorst (2008) in believing that ‘the point in making a […] counter-narrative approach […] is not just an academic game [but] to develop a tool to investigate why some narratives attain the status of the truth about the past and others are never told, or doomed to a shadowy existence in circulation among specialist historians’ (pp. 5–6). In this context we use a counternarrative strategy in two ways: first, we reconstruct and discuss entrepreneurialism as what we term a ‘Messiah narrative’ in order to examine why business creation dominates contemporary entrepreneurship studies. Second, we provide a ‘Sisyphus counternarrative’, with an eye to encouraging a shift in attention to the element of ‘destruction’ inherent in the concept of ‘creative destruction’.

Both narratives can be considered as variations on the Schumpeterian meta-narrative. Furthermore, we consider them as mutually reaffirming emplotments of creative destruction. The first valorises creativity and idealises the entrepreneur as a hero. Beyond this, it converts Schumpeter into a prophet rather than a theorist. As a prophet, Schumpeter’s actual arguments become secondary to the mobilisation of present assumptions about how the world works. Suitable for disciplinary unity, religious overtones saturate this narrative, and it firmly belongs within the genre of apology. The second is more fatalistic in tone, casting the entrepreneur as a tragic character bound to the ever-recurrent succession of creation and destruction. Schumpeter is duly acknowledged as an important theorist yet not the sole source of insight. As a counternarrative, it emphasises destruction over creation, absurdism over optimism, and instead of an all-prevailing hero it boasts a protagonist bound to an inescapable fate from which no return can be devised. It is told within the genre of dystopian fiction.

Using genres to construct new narratives originates from the idea that genre conventions offer unorthodox templates for theoretical expression and, thus, encourage more variety in scholarly output (De Cock & Land, 2006). After searching for the best fit between genre and research motive, we arrived at the genres of apology and dystopian fiction. Apology is a genre that emphasises the need to defend a legitimate account of what is considered important and dogmatically true.¹ This makes writing in the genre of apology a suitable literary tool for generating a narrative expression of a dominant, if also comparably narrow, view of entrepreneurship. Dystopian fiction, on the other hand, is a more satirical and cautionary form of expression,² and as such suits our intention of developing a counternarrative infused by a destruction-based view of entrepreneurship. In this way, engaging with genre conventions helped set the scene for the following ideal-typical narratives.

To be clear, our intention here is not to pit these two narratives against each other, as would be done in a strict dualism approach, but rather to use them dialectically so as to expand the tent for historical entrepreneurship research and provide more options for historical research with a particular emphasis on the narrative structure of historical writing. We do this by teasing out tensions between the narratives, and illuminate how and for whom they are satisfying. This, we argue, is supportive of historical entrepreneurship studies in that it moves beyond the current fixation on business creation and opportunity exploitation and towards generating creative-destructive syntheses as the entrepreneurial foundations for capitalist transformation.

The Messiah narrative

The West, and especially the United States of America, is richer than the rest of the world. We thank the Entrepreneur for this. He (and it is always a ‘he’) leverages new technologies, more effective material sources, and ground-breaking ideas in a novel and fortuitous fashion (Mokyr, 2016). The Entrepreneur is more American than not (Reagan, 1985). We pay tribute to Him and thank Him for our jobs, our salaries, and our products.

Although some others had caught glimpses of the Entrepreneur, the gospel was first revealed to Joseph Schumpeter. Schumpeter was a grand social theorist. His legacy is the concept of innovation, which explains why the Entrepreneur is great.

After Schumpeter, others too have been able to let the Entrepreneur into their hearts. Hard-working researchers have devoted their time to study who the Entrepreneur is, in order for us to emulate Him and His deeds more profoundly. The Entrepreneur has been found to be liberal, moderately ascetic, and tireless as a worker (Gartner, 1988).

He does not identify obstacles that lie ahead, only opportunities (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). He is unbound to tradition and can arise from any social class (Schumpeter, 1955). Becoming more like Him is liberating (Rindova et al., 2009).

A man named Keynes has attempted to confuse matters, and has gained numerous followers in this. However, we should not stray from the truth, which is that only the Entrepreneur can save us from poverty.

Another man named Kirzner has said that not only is the Entrepreneur a creative genius, he is also perceptive and alert to people’s needs (Kirzner, 2009). We need to accept the Entrepreneur into our hearts, and become the Entrepreneur of our own lives in order to attain the riches of our dreams.

We term this the ‘Messiah narrative’ for its glorification of entrepreneurship and establishment of a true conception of its revelation to humankind. It suggests that entrepreneurs are people who get things done, that is, creatively-minded men who are able to regard the world with a sceptical (yet not overly sceptical) eye, remain focussed on the goals at hand, and take control of their own lives. This narrative also, at least potentially, recognises Joseph Schumpeter as an influential theorist, which is consistent with his analytical focus on the entrepreneur as an extraordinary historical figure (McCraw, 2007; Swedberg, 1991).

The narrative further transmits a lesson on the progressive and individualistic nature of Western (Northern European and Protestant Christian) culture. Accordingly, ‘the Entrepreneur’ represents Western cultural values, and especially those of the United States. In its essence the narrative, however, is universalistic, holistic, and religious in that it states that ‘the Entrepreneur’ has imbued America with greatness. Due to its religious overtones it also contains apologetic features, as it defends its ground against alternative theories, such as those by Keynes (seen as Schumpeter’s arch enemy) and Kirzner.

We posit this as a dominant narrative in contemporary entrepreneurship studies, especially as it is found in its specialist journals (McMullen, 2019). Our purpose here is not to find fault with this narrative as such—the claims contained therein are supported by historical research and revolve around the ‘facts’ that Schumpeter sought to describe and interrelate through theory. Instead, by using exaggeration as a tool we aim to demonstrate the availability of other narratives and to suggest that there is more to entrepreneurship than is contained in this narrative, especially if we focus our attention on creative destruction.

The Sisyphus counternarrative

The entrepreneur works in vain. All creative accomplishments shall one day be destroyed. Every undertaking is subject to being superseded by new structures. This is inherent to the capitalist process.

Schumpeter recognised this well. He gave economic currency to the concept of creative destruction and placed the creative entrepreneur at the centre of his theoretical work. Fritz Redlich, who worked at the Harvard Center of Entrepreneurial History, sought to theorise how destructivity originates in the creative act itself (Fredona & Reinert, 2017). However, this synthetic view did not catch on and remains obscure.

Schumpeter said that entrepreneurs can rarely hold on to their elevated position for long (Schumpeter, 1955). If not the entrepreneurs themselves, then their offspring will opt for a different lifestyle, and even develop hostility to business, especially if it is seen, as entrepreneurs tend to do, as ‘a goal in itself’ (Redlich, 1953a, p. 174). The archetypal entrepreneurial trajectory is therefore ‘three generations from overalls to overalls’ (Schumpeter, 1947a, p. 159).

In the end, there is no permanent gain. The entrepreneur’s happiness depends on our imagination.

We term this the ‘Sisyphus counternarrative’ for its portrayal of entrepreneurship as an endless task. We borrow Sisyphus from the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, who reasoned that there exists no pre-assigned meaning to life, and that in order to avoid self-destruction we need to ‘imagine Sisyphus happy’ (Camus, 1955, p. 91). Like Sisyphus, who pushes his rock uphill only to see it fall back again, entrepreneurial capitalism negates itself. It perpetually destroys that which it has created.

In contrast to the Messiah narrative, the Sisyphean entrepreneur appears in lower-case, for how can a hero signify the meaninglessness of life rather than saving the world? Here, the entrepreneur is not a hero but an anti-hero; whereas the Messiah promises salvation, Sisyphus will never be able to deliver, for the narrative itself resolves nothing. Rather than espouse Puritanism, the Sisyphus counternarrative confronts nihilism.

We posit Sisyphus as counternarrative, the purpose of which is not to present entrepreneurs as villains, as suggested by some critical theorists (Laird, 2017), but rather to balance both creativity and destructivity in equal measures. It is in this sense that the Sisyphus counternarrative cleaves to the spirit of creative destruction more closely than that of the Messiah.

Analysis

We now turn to how and why the ‘Messiah narrative’ has attained its predominant position within entrepreneurship studies. To date, much research into entrepreneurship has relied on a heroic conception of entrepreneurs who emerge victorious. This work has taken as its point of departure the notion that clever and spirited action leads to the exploitation of opportunities, the creation of new business, and increased economic good. In this context, success is narratively preordained and the possibility of failure is rarely acknowledged: the ‘Messianic Entrepreneur’ ultimately prevails over adversarial forces. Negative aspects are externalised to become situational and contextual, or adjunct, parameters. Creativity always outweighs destruction, for that which is good must always win while the bad is vanquished. The ‘Messiah narrative’ is self-assured in that it chooses to forget that which does not fit into its plot. The ‘Sisyphus (counter)narrative’ contributes to redressing this one-sidedness by showing that increases in creativity are accompanied by commensurate increases in destructivity.

Understanding the appeal of the Messiah narrative

Both narratives provide understandings of entrepreneurship, yet it is the ‘Messiah narrative’ that prevails in contemporary entrepreneurship literature. By presenting ‘the Entrepreneur’ as a powerful hero who overcomes adversity, the narrative functions as a sermon for positive and creative agency that is easily identified and serves as a compelling explanation of wealth creation. In contrast to the ‘Sisyphus counternarrative’, it imbues entrepreneurial personality with great power to the point of idolisation.

As an apology, the ‘Messiah narrative’ deals with ‘truth’ and defends it against heresy, thereby creating binaries crucial for both drama as well as the cultivation of a sense of belonging. In this it is a prototypical heroic myth, for one must overcome the circumstances that pertain in order to be a hero and save the world. Moreover, just as all mythological heroes, ‘the Entrepreneur’ saves the world (that is, the economy) not for themselves but for everyone. Importantly the hero’s ways can be learned and emulated. In this manner the narrative becomes an invitation for individuals to think of themselves as ‘the Entrepreneur’.

The ‘Sisyphus counternarrative’ is less captivating, and Sisyphus is certainly less suited for worship than the Messiah. Sisyphus is an introvert and works fruitlessly, unable to transport the sense of adventure that is crucial to the ‘Messiah narrative’. Sisyphus is no leader and the focus of the narrative lies not on creation but on existence. It follows that Sisyphus fails to advocate an exciting future that could be unlocked by innovators.

As if the past’s complexities and tensions were already resolved, entrepreneurialism reproduces the moral investments it has made in the present. It appears more comfortable to narrate the past according to present beliefs than to generate alternate conceptions of how the present state has been achieved. Explaining present good as the fruit of past entrepreneurs’ labour makes sense, because it serves to convince people that the future, whilst elusive, nevertheless rests in the hands of talented and hard-working entrepreneurs.

When a narrative satisfies a group of scholars, it can develop into a research agenda, thus ceasing to be merely explanatory and, instead, becoming a crucial element of that group’s identity. In this regard the ‘Messiah narrative’ has achieved success, particularly in business schools, by inviting agency and creativity into a comparatively formulaic and dry curriculum. The narrative connects the theoretical duties of university research with societal impact by enabling researchers to engage with society at large and present their research as socially relevant. It goes without saying that this rests upon a particular interpretation of the history of business, in which historical understandings of creative destruction seldom enter the discussion, let alone contribute to new explanations of entrepreneurship. The emphasis on heroic narratives is deliberate in that it aims to harness creativity for preordained purposes.

The appeal of the ‘Messiah narrative’ cannot only be linked to academic incentives, however. Like all successful narratives it lends itself to modification and accommodates various orientations, as well as supporting the aspirations of others beyond the field. For one, those who consider themselves to be successful entrepreneurs have a clear stake in sustaining a narrative that directly flatters them and which supports claims for greater freedom from political intrusion into business activity—although it can just as readily be activated in order to present a plausible case for public support when needed. Conversely, politicians find this narrative useful when claiming to build society by supporting free enterprise, thus giving the impression of steering the economy. The ‘Sisyphus counternarrative’ appeals less to these carriers, and alternative approaches to entrepreneurship remain at the margins.

A dominant narrative waxes even stronger once it satisfies those who have no particular interest in it. To achieve this, the narrative needs to fit in with the beliefs and attitudes of a broader public that accepts the explanation as contributing to the construction of collective identity. In this regard, too, the Messiah excels over Sisyphus by being coherent in a way that enables connecting individual agency with societal developments. It complements individualism by reaffirming entrepreneurship as a socio-economically beneficial phenomenon, in that engaging in entrepreneurial activity is both expressive of individual potential as well as contributing to a collective movement that transcends specific people, events, and ideas. Although satisfaction could also be found in the ‘Sisyphus counternarrative’, we argue that it is only the ‘Messiah narrative’ that currently delivers such satisfaction.

The ‘Messiah narrative’ retains its predominance when all of its various carriers use it to explain entrepreneurship. This pertains, for example, to its usage in explaining choices made in academic curricula and university strategies, business biographies, political programmes, the emplotment of opinion pieces, and so on. This narrative thereby provides a common explanation for choices made by different people in different situations yet who aim to achieve similar results by using similar rhetorical methods. The citation of Schumpeter for such purposes is sensible in that eliciting the support of a pre-eminent scholar validates such explanations.

The ‘Sisyphus counternarrative’ fails to satisfy larger clusters of carriers and therefore lacks similar support. It invokes little of the excitement generated by the ‘Messiah narrative’ and resonates only with countercultural or antiquated interests—in particular also because this narrative lacks a designated theorist with a compelling voice and historical authority.

Reintegrating destruction into entrepreneurial literature

The main goal of this paper has been to contribute to understanding how historical entrepreneurship studies can provide novel analyses of transformative change within and beyond capitalism. With this goal in mind we have analysed the dominant ‘Messiah narrative’: an excessive and narrowly conceived focus on individual-level creativity in entrepreneurship literature. To re-envision entrepreneurship as connective tissue between transformations at the individual and societal levels, we have provided a ‘Sisyphus counternarrative’ and argued for historical research to reintegrate destruction into the entrepreneurial literature. However, we have reasoned that the ‘Sisyphus counternarrative’ is less appealing than the ‘Messiah narrative’ because it offers less explanatory satisfaction for its potential carriers. We now turn to discussing what business historians interested in entrepreneurship can do in order to flesh out more destructive visions of entrepreneurship.

First, we encourage business scholarship to consider and develop new narratives around the people significantly contributing to, and affected by, entrepreneurship, yet who are otherwise not identifiable as main characters in the entrepreneurial plot. Telling the stories of beneficiaries and victims can enrich our understanding of how entrepreneurship changes people’s lives, sometimes for the better yet sometimes for the worse. Furthermore, it can provide context to the ‘Messiah narrative’ while also rendering its destructive underpinnings more salient. Studying the friends, families, and/or partners of celebrated entrepreneurs, for example, could help locate the destructive forces at play in entrepreneurship, as well as show how their interplay with creativity results in significant change. A further option lies in examining more closely the people who directly benefit from entrepreneurialism yet remain unidentifiable as entrepreneurs themselves—supporters, investors, fans, copywriters, and anyone whose livelihood depends on maintaining the supranormal image of the Messianic entrepreneur. This approach would enable uncovering the wider societal implications of entrepreneurialism, as well as reveal that which is obscured by the ‘Messiah narrative’.

A different approach lies in turning the ‘Messiah narrative’ upside-down by studying the entrepreneurial actions of obvious villains, such as human traffickers, warlords, or swindlers. Studying those who profit from the opportunities provided by a failing societal contract could help point out basic similarities between those considered as creators and those considered as destroyers of capitalism. Researchers could also investigate how destructive types of behaviour are historically justified, an early example of which is Redlich’s (1953a, 1953b) research on the social Darwinist attitudes of the ‘Robber Barons’ of the late 19^th century, for whom social conscience was an unnecessary and even harmful epiphenomenon potentially preventing them from profiteering and, hence, advancing capitalism. Focussing on blatantly destructive, even ‘evil’ characters contributes to breaking traditional taboos in entrepreneurial discourse, as well as imbuing discussions of market opportunities with more realism.

Third, historians could look into distinctively anti-heroic forms of entrepreneurship, focussing specifically on people who act entrepreneurially yet do not fit the profile of the ‘Messiah narrative’. For example, entrepreneurs creating market niches, creators of non-market livelihoods, and community enterprises proffer fertile grounds for exploring the interplay of creative and destructive forces, and often on a less grandiose scale (Kibler & Muñoz, 2020). Identifying anti-heroic entrepreneurs is arguably more difficult than Messianic entrepreneurs, but can be rewarding in the sense of providing alternative accounts of historical change. Anti-heroes may have chosen to operate at the margins of society and in areas where innovations are less expected. Furthermore, the changes such characters bring about are likelier to be characterised by ‘smallness’ rather than ‘greatness’. Here, a more fundamental understanding of freedom may be the decisive factor, rather than profit. Anti-heroic entrepreneurs might not embody the ideals of entrepreneurialism and, as a result, remain uncelebrated in the literature, unnoticed by the wider public, and, perhaps, bear the imprint of immorality—yet nevertheless, through them the door to a richer realm of transformative narratives could be opened.

Fourth, exploring how entrepreneurial narratives lend themselves to different tropes and genres could imbue the theoretical commitments made by researchers in the study of entrepreneurship with more transparency. While our brief analysis has been limited to the genres of apology and dystopian fiction, further possibilities abound and the study of tropes that are usually side-lined but still hold explanatory potential may be particularly fruitful. One example here could be to examine entrepreneurship as a collective and temporally layered phenomenon through idyllic tropes, and thus counter the more traditional focus on the achievements made by individual heroes. A further possibility lies in directly engaging with the archetypal narrative structures of entrepreneurship, such as heroic journeys, in order to understand the cultural emplotment of entrepreneurship (Laine & Kibler, 2018). Finally, a more critical approach could be adopted by focussing on emancipatory tales of entrepreneurship so as to flesh out fresh understandings of the imaginaries and beneficiaries of entrepreneurial theory (Laine & Kibler, 2022).

The task for new entrepreneurial history lies in re-envisioning creative destruction as key to understanding the past, present, and future of capitalism—and entrepreneurship as its vital engine. Entrepreneurship studies have chiefly focussed on business creation, yet by unleashing alternative stories, surprising events, and new narrative manifestations of destructive creation, historical research can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of entrepreneurship’s connection to capitalist transformations.

Concluding thoughts

Entrepreneurship can and ought to be beneficial for both society at large and individual people. However, its glorification can result in the loss of both theoretical vision and historical reason. We have instead sought here to put forward a view of entrepreneurship as the mainspring of creative destruction, by means of which historical change can be studied. A narrative approach, we have argued, is very well capable of linking entrepreneurial processes with historical change.

Looking back at our analysis, we acknowledge that our focus on narrative historical reasoning is controversial and that our two ideal-typical narratives can be viewed as destabilising caricatures rather than representatives of actual research, thereby serving to promote epistemological anarchy rather than advance the theoretical unification of entrepreneurship studies. We respond by calling to mind that the counternarrative research strategy does not aim at producing evidence of coherent real-life processes but, instead, invites greater reflection on the key motivations for entrepreneurial research. Furthermore, these narratives are designed to be in dialogue with each other in order to move towards theoretical syntheses of destructivity and creativity, as well as propelling historical research in the direction of fleshing out this theoretical vision.

To those who argue against the research value of narrative reasoning, we pose the challenge of providing an alternative rationale for entrepreneurial heroics. We continue to believe that historical entrepreneurship studies can overcome mere narrative fulfilment and embrace Carr’s (2008) reminder that satisfaction should mark a beginning, not the end, for inquiry.

Notes

1 According to Goodrich (2005) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, 25–26: ‘[T]he apology in essence tells the story of the one true faith and uses that story to justify the creed, the dogmas, and constitutions of the Church. […] Any foundational treatise, that is to say any institutional or dogmatic statement of the articles of a tradition or discipline, will tend to use the form of the apology. […] The foundational work will establish the legitimate origin, the singular narrative or lineage of the discipline while simultaneously discounting false histories, alternative narratives, plural or other truths’.

2 According to Booker (2005) in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, 127–128: ‘[D]ystopias are often designed to critique the potential negative implications of certain forms of utopian thought. However, dystopian [fiction] tends to have a strong satirical dimension that is designed to warn against the possible consequences of certain tendencies in the real world of the present’.