History's Investor-Entrepreneurs

Joe Carlen, author of the acclaimed The Einstein of Money is out with a new book, A Brief History of Entrepreneurship. Joe's guest post followed by full bio at the bottom of the post.
As I was writing my recent book, A Brief History of Entrepreneurship, I had many discussions with a patent attorney friend of mine about the inventor-entrepreneur. The latter, like 18^th century Britain’s James Watt and modern America’s Elon Musk, is a particular type of entrepreneur who stands at the intersection of profit-seeking and profound technological innovation. Yet, as it turns out, from antiquity until the present, the investor-entrepreneur is at least as prominent and significant as the more celebrated inventor-entrepreneurs. This piece, drawing...