Where Schumpeter explained the innovation drive by an exogenous factor called entrepreneurial spirits, neo-Schumpeterian economists refer to endogenous factors such as science and technology policies and corporate strategies of research and development to explain innovation.
In the aftermath of World War II, policymakers became increasingly convinced of the importance of science and technology policy.
Quantitative research into the relation between economic growth and science and technology expenditures became a possibility with the global application of national accounts in the 1950s and the adoption in 1963 of the Frascati manual, an internationally accepted approach to measuring science and technology expenditures.
Christopher Freeman, who was involved in the development of the Frascati Manual and was the first director of SPRU, published in 1974 his seminal book "The economics of industrial innovation".
[2] The international Joseph A. Schumpeter Society was founded in 1986 at the initiative of Wolfgang Stolper and Horst Hanusch.