An economist for our times: innovative enterprise, changing industrial leadership, and the looting of the US business corporation. An interview with William Lazonick[Un economista para nuestro tiempo: la empresa innovadora, el cambio de liderazgo industrial y el saqueo de la corporación empresarial estadounidense. Entrevista con William Lazonick]

Over an academic career that has spanned more than fifty years since he started his PhD at the department of economics at Harvard University, William Lazonick has made pioneering contributions on changing industrial leadership, including: - the rise and decline of the British economy; - the ascent to industrial leadership of US managerial capitalism; - the Japanese challenge; - the emergence of China as an industrial power; - the decline of the US industrial economy. In the process, he has constructed the "Theory of Innovative Enterprise" (TIE) as an approach to analyzing economic change. His most recent work focuses on innovation and competition in R&D-intensive industries and the use of stock buybacks to loot the US business corporation. In his work, he has a particular interest in understanding the relation between corporate strategy and employment relations in influencing the quest for stable and equitable economic growth. He has also used TIE to deliver fundamental critiques of the neoclassical theory of the market economy and the ideology that companies should be run to maximize shareholder value. His multiple academic honors include two honorary doctorates, the Schumpeter Prize in 2010, two-time winner of best article in Business History Review in 1983 and 2010, and the HBR-McKinsey Award for outstanding article in Harvard Business Review in 2014. In 2010, he co-founded the Academic-Industry Research Network to engage in real-time analysis of innovation, competition, and economic performance within industries and across nations1. His research has guided government policy. Besides his academic publications, he frequently writes media articles directed at government officials, business executives, and informed citizens. In a series of interviews conducted at various times between 2019 and 2024, we learn how Lazonick's career progressed from being a commerce and finance student in the department of political economy in the University of Toronto to becoming a globally recognized expert on the threat of financialization for the innovative firm. The development of Lazonick's theory of innovative enterprise has been shaped by his graduate work in economic history, the history of economic thinking, and the rise of capitalism as well as his ongoing international comparative research on the dynamics of innovation at national, industrial, and corporate levels. Interactions with non-academic groups such as journalists and policy-makers have expanded the influence of his critique of shareholder value maximization.