The Entrepreneurship Scholar Plays with Blocs: Collaborative Innovation or Collaborative Judgment?

Elert and Henrekson (2019) draw important connections between Austrian economics and the Schumpeterian literatures on “development blocs” and “the experimentally organized economy.” We appreciate their emphasis on experimentation and think that Austrian ideas on the time structure of production and the multiple specificities of capital offer complementary insights into why production is likely to be clustered, localized, and path-dependent. While we agree that Austrian economics can benefit from a “meso” level of analysis between individuals and market outcomes, we do not think their proposed Experimentally Organized Economy framework adds much to existing Austrian theory and policy analysis. We also suggest that, by focusing on Kirzner’s entrepreneurial discovery approach, Elert and Henrekson miss other Austrian approaches to entrepreneurship that can better inform their analysis.