#101 - Entrepreneurship Through the Ages: From Growth Engines to Sustainable Innovation
- Pawel Pietruszewski
- Oct 31
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 1
Over the past two weeks, I’ve been working with my students on the history of entrepreneurship.
Please don’t panic - if you’re reading this on a mobile device, the image below might look dense. But this timeline, developed with contributions from students at Kozminski University, offers a fascinating summary of how entrepreneurship has evolved from the 18th century to today. It’s a story of innovation, resilience, and the shifting needs of society.
From Steam Engines to Silicon Chips
At the beginning of the 18th century, people sailed and rode horses not for leisure, but because those were the only available means of transportation. Even the bicycle hadn’t yet been invented. The steam engine, electricity, and eventually the internet sparked waves of innovation that transformed nearly every aspect of life.
The dominant paradigm of this period was growth.
Consider this: GDP per capita (in constant 2017 PPP dollars) rose from $1,220 in 1800 to $17,800 in 2023. [1][2]
At the same time, the global population expanded from 1 billion to over 8 billion. The level of economic activity today is staggering.
In the chart below, you can see the economic trajectories of various countries I typically include in my analyses. No matter the starting point, all have experienced remarkable development. In just 200 years, a blink in the timeline of human history, we’ve created a world that feels like a different planet altogether.
Rethinking Growth in the 21st Century
This transformation raises a key question:
What level of income is sufficient for a high quality of life?
According to the Sustainable Development Index, an income of $20,000 (2017 PPP) is enough to achieve strong social outcomes: life expectancy, education, happiness, and gender equality. [3]
While many wealthier countries already surpass this threshold, large parts of the world remain significantly below it. Inequality continues to be a major challenge.
We are however fast approaching a turning point, a point where further growth may offer diminishing returns for much of the world’s population. Meanwhile, the Planetary Boundaries framework warns that human activity has already pushed Earth beyond its safe operating space. [4]
And yet, we still live in a world obsessed with growth.
The Future of Entrepreneurship: Beyond the Growth Trap
One of the most insightful observations from my students was this:
“In the 19th and 20th centuries, entrepreneurs solved real societal problems. In recent decades, we see more and more products that create superficial needs, aggressively marketed rather than genuinely needed.”
This highlights a core dilemma of modern entrepreneurship: Are we innovating to solve real problems - or to sustain a system stuck in a growth trap?
It may well be that the most successful entrepreneurs of the future will be those who figure out how to escape this trap - creating innovations that are both profitable and sustainable.
Final Thought
We’re entering an era where success will require balance. The entrepreneurs of tomorrow will be those who redefine growth, not as endless expansion, but as meaningful progress.
References and Notes
[1] - GDP per capita measures the value of everything produced in a country during a year, divided by the number of people. The unit is constant dollars adjusted for inflation in 2017’s prices and Purchasing Power Parity(PPP).
[2] Data source: Gapminder.org
Fully agree. Modern commerce for more than 2 decades has been driven by creating needs. That is a wide world idea which one can observe in many many advertisments. Also almost any commercial traing base on that idea - create a need! I am an exaple, although working in commerce, who falls into this trap as a customer! In other words - it works, but does the idea has a future? This is a question which we must ask and wisely answer - as you said - right balance, as always and everywhare.