The unfolding revival agenda at this point in time can be best summarized as an exercise in defensive optimism. Speakers at the 1970 MPS conference observed a decline of owner-entrepreneurs along the lines expected by Schumpeter. Contrasting the concerns and fears voiced in conservative and neoliberal circles during the 1950s and 1960s, the speakers in Munich highlighted surprising sources of optimism with regard to the future of the market economy. Authors pointed to considerable entrepreneurship in large corporations and to the changing behavior of average citizens. Fertig observed that 12 percent of Americans owned shares, for example, and reported a strong increase in the volume of investment funds. The former read like a preview of the "intrapreneurship" and innovation system discourse to be further discussed below, and the latter pointed to the impending expansion of scope of the entrepreneurship discussion.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 284