TY  - JOUR
AU  - Baumol,William J.
TI  - Education for Innovation: Entrepreneurial Breakthroughs vs. Corporate Incremental Improvements
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10578
PY  - 2004
Y2  - June 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10578
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10578.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
William Baumol
Dept. of Economics
New York University
19 W. 4th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10012
E-Mail: william.baumol@nyu.edu
AB  - This paper explores the following hypotheses on the appropriate education for innovating entrepreneurship: a) breakthrough inventions are contributed disproportionately by independent inventors and entrepreneurs, while large firms focus on cumulative, incremental (and often invaluable) improvements; b) education for mastery of scientific knowledge and methods is enormously valuable for innovation and growth, but can impede heterodox thinking and imagination; c) large-firm R&D requires personnel who are highly educated in extant information and analytic methods, while successful independent entrepreneurs and inventors often lack such preparation; d) while procedures for teaching current knowledge and methods in science and engineering are effective, we know little about training for the critical task of breakthrough innovation.
ER  -