After serving as Austria’s Minister of Finance and as Chair of Public Finance in Bonn, Schumpeter joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1932, where he stayed until his death in 1950. His work at Harvard on entrepreneurship and capitalism helped make him one of the country’s most influential economists.

Schumpeter held an evolutionary view of capitalism and described the periodic action of economic change – fueled by technological innovation – as one of "creative destruction". Naturally, it was the entrepreneur – the agent of that innovation and the harbinger of creative destruction – that was the most important element in Schumpeter’s economic theories.

Among Schumpeter’s many books, two stand out as masterpieces: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942) and the posthumously-published History of Economic Analysis (1954).