This issue brings together articles that explore the growth of capitalism, rise of corporate institutions, and efforts to keep businesses innovative through strategy and policy.
In “The Making of Commercial Innovations,” the scholars Arnaud Bartolomei, Matthieu de Oliveira, Boris Deschanel, and Thomas Mollanger explore the ways that the printing of almanacs, trade cards, and printed circulars helped to expand commerce in France beginning in the late eighteenth century.
Timothy Guinnane analyzes the origins of the most popular form of business enterprise in Germany, the GmbH, which was formulated in 1892. Maanik Nath explores the efforts by the British to transplant cooperative banks into British-ruled India and the reasons for the ultimate failure of this plan.
In looking at efforts to preserve capitalist enterprise, Peter Conti-Brown and Sean H. Vanatta, explain the reasons behind the success of Franklin Roosevelt's early New Deal policy of holding a Bank Holiday in 1933 to try to stave off further economic collapse. Finally, Tom Nicholas's article “How History Shaped the Innovator's Dilemma” surveys the impact of Clayton Christensen's influential book, The Innovator's Dilemma, which drew on historical example for understanding the nature of innovation.
