Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Local Economic DevelopmentMark CassonDirector, Centre for Institutional Performance, University of Reading

Popular views of entrepreneurship

• The entrepreneur as intellectual• Artist• Scientist• Philosopher

• The entrepreneur and charisma• Leadership• Change agent• Strategist

Analytical approaches

• Opportunity-seeker• Innovator• Risk-taker• Judgemental decision-maker

Potential positive impacts on local economic development

• Job creation (and destruction)• Infrastructure-building• Creating business opportunities through

partnerships and subcontracting• Product and service innovations enhance quality

of life• Housing improvements

Potential negative impacts

• Jobs for immigrants and not locals• More jobs but lower skills (artisans versus

shopkeepers) • Destruction of heritage sites• ‘Shovelling out the paupers’• Political corruption

• Comment: The assessment of impacts is framed by value-judgements

Historical case studies

• Nineteenth century England• William Morris – artist, artisan and shopkeeper• James Watt – innovative engineer

• Late fourteenth-century England:• Richard Spynk of Norwich: financing local infrastructure• Dick Whittington – promoting London as a trading centre

• Nineteenth century Southern California• Henry Huntingdon – property developer extraordinary

Source: Casson and Casson: The Entrepreneur in History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Conclusions• When does entrepreneurship have a beneficial impact?• social as well as selfish concerns• aesthetic sensibility• partnership as well as individual initiative• ‘building bridges’ rather than creating divisions

• Are local impacts becoming more or less positive?• Modern projects: industrial, profit-oriented promotion, globally

financed• Medieval projects : advanced pre-industrial technologies; civic-

orientation; locally financed• Medieval entrepreneurship may have made a greater contribution

to local quality of life