Competition and Entrepreneurship is a book with many interesting insights. Kirzner provides a thorough critique of contemporary price theory, theory of entrepreneurship, and the theory of competition. He sees orthodox price theory as explaining the configuration of prices and quantities that satisfied the conditions for equilibrium. He argues that "it is more useful to look to price theory to help understand how the decisions of individual participants in the market interact to generate the market forces which compel changes in prices, outputs, and methods of production and in the allocation of resources". Although Competition and Entrepreneurship is primarily concerned with the operation of the market economy, Kirzner clearly shows that the rediscovery of the entrepreneur must emerge as a step of major importance.

Richard Cantillon (1680-1734), an Irish economist, has claims to be regarded as one of the most outstanding analytical economists of the eighteenth century. F. A. Hayek wrote that Cantillon was the first to fully articulate economics as a science. In the Essay, Cantillon outlined an extraordinary model-building approach showing how the economy could be built up, through progressive stages, from a command, barter, closed economy to a market economy, which uses money and is open. He produced some outstanding monetary theory including what Mark Blaug called the Cantillon effect when demonstrating the effects of monetary expansion on inflation, output, and the balance of payments. He also highlighted the difficulties created by excessive financial innovation for a real economy and outlined the dangers of foreign borrowing by a country. Though written in the eighteenth century, the Essay has a considerable resonance for a twenty-first-century audience.

This book looks for the first time at the relationships among these elements: innovation, intrapreneurship, and corporate culture; and indicates how these three elements can be integrated to achieve the maximum advantage in global market competition. Oden makes clear that corporations must have not only a culture that supports innovation and intrapreneurship, but an organization and work force that can adapt quickly to exigencies. Also required is a well-structured venturing process. He describes this process in the second part of the book, breaking it down into three phases: concept development, technical development, and business development.