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Proving Future Profit: Business Plans as Demonstration Devices
Osiris ( IF 0.5 ) Pub Date : 2018-10-01 , DOI: 10.1086/699293
Martin Giraudeau

This essay is a study of the “Project for the establishment of a war and hunting gunpowder manufactory in the United States,” written by Irénée Du Pont de Nemours in 1800, in order to raise funds from potential investors for what was to become the DuPont Corporation. It shows that the “Project” is best understood as a demonstration device akin to those used by natural philosophers at the time. This investment proposal relied on demonstration techniques similar to those of the report of an experiment, textually gathering a crowd of virtual witnesses to address their objections, submitting the proposed manufactory to a number of manipulations to assess its reactions under various circumstances, and relying on a specific experimental device—a profit-and-loss account—that made it possible to produce compelling quantitative results. The essay shows the originality of these techniques at a time when profit-and-loss calculations were uncommon in business practice. It explains that these calculations were intended to ameliorate the entrepreneur’s problematic credit situation, which required a specific demonstrative effort, and points to scientific demonstration practices in Physiocratic political economy, and in Lavoisier’s chemistry, as likely influences.

中文翻译:

证明未来的利润:作为示范设备的商业计划

这篇文章是对 Irénée Du Pont de Nemours 于 1800 年撰写的“在美国建立战争和狩猎火药厂的项目”的研究,目的是为后来成为杜邦公司的潜在投资者筹集资金。公司。它表明,最好将“项目”理解为类似于当时自然哲学家使用的演示设备。该投资提案依赖于类似于实验报告的演示技术,以文字形式聚集一群虚拟见证人来解决他们的反对意见,将提议的工厂提交给许多操作以评估其在各种情况下的反应,并依赖于特定的实验设备——盈亏账户——可以产生令人信服的定量结果。这篇文章展示了这些技术的独创性,当时损益计算在商业实践中并不常见。它解释说,这些计算旨在改善企业家有问题的信用状况,这需要特定的论证努力,并指出重农政治经济学和拉瓦锡化学中的科学论证实践可能会产生影响。
更新日期:2018-10-01
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