ABSTRACT
The functional source of innovation can usually be traced to who benefits from the innovation. The profit motive is one source of motivation for manufacturers. The source of innovations and the motivating forces that stimulate the entrepreneur to create innovations has enormous economic impacts on efficiency and economic growth as well as firm creation and expansion. However, as great as these economic impacts are, economic literature or analysis of the entrepreneur is scarce. Firms are motivated by profits; entrepreneurs are motivated by a sociologically distinct drive to make improvements in products and/or production processes. In the 1950s and 1960s, renowned economist Kenneth Arrow steadfastly and sometimes almost single-handedly demonstrated the economic importance of the need for the federal government to support research and development in the US economy. An historic role has been well developed for the economic importance of federal government support for research and development of new products and processes for US firms to utilize and market.
