While at Chicago , Innis was exposed to the ideas of Thorstein Veblen , the iconoclastic thinker who drew on his deep knowledge of philosophy and economics to write scathing critiques of contemporary thought and culture . Veblen had left Chicago years before , but his ideas was still strongly felt there . Years later , in an essay on Veblen , Innis praised him for waging war against " standardized static economics " .