Telecommunications, the Internet and Mr Schumpeter

The purpose of this chapter is thus to understand the ups and downs of this industry, and especially to identify in Schumpeter's vision of capitalism what could be the determinants of such an evolution. In a nutshell, the paper will investigate to what extent the key notions of Schumpeter's analysis – which include economic development and creative destruction, entrepreneurship and large firms, patterns of industry dynamics and evolution, competition as a process, and invention and innovation – can shed a new light on the evidence of the rise and decay of the telecommunications industry viewed as an exemplifying and central figure of modern economic capitalism.