Introduction

The role played by the entrepreneur in economic theory, and especially in the theory of economic growth, has given rise to a long and complex debate. The classical and neo-classical schools were aware of its importance but as the theory became more formalized and mathematical, notably with the neoclassical revolution and the introduction of marginalism, the role of the entrepreneur was pushed towards the edges of the model, as information was assumed to be costless, and, therefore, decision making and risk-taking played a very small role, or none at all, in the reaching of market equilibrium, which was the main explicandum in the theory (see a synthesis in Audretsch and Keilbach, 2009). For this smoothing out of the entrepreneur, Arthur Cole (1953, p. 182) blamed David Ricardo personally because he ‘failed to pursue the suggestion supplied by Cantillon and Jean-Baptiste Say that the entrepreneur be distinguished clearly from the other agents of production’. In classical and neo-classical economics, growth was explained chiefly by the increases of population and of physical inputs. Technical progress was assumed to be a lever for growth, but its evolution was attributed mainly to exogenous factors: politics, culture, social maturity, etc.