STRINGS ATTACHED: designing better bailouts – Common Wealth’s Adrienne Buller and economist Mariana Mazzucato discuss the conditions they’d like to see over here. AND Former table tennis champion turned best-selling author Matthew Syed chats about his book on the importance of diverse thinking.
“‘And then there’s this idea of linking what we do to people. The idea of the missions, which comes from the work of the economist Mariana Mazzucato, is exactly to create ways of communicating better to the people what we do (in European science and research)” Carlos Moedas
“La idea de que el crecimiento económico no solo tiene una tasa sino una dirección, y que la innovación orientada por misiones debe estar al centro de las estrategias de crecimiento, está dando la vuelta al mundo, con la economista Mariana Mazzucato como una de sus principales promotoras.”
“Mazzucato mostly writes about technological and industrial innovations… which vividly illustrates particular ways in which the two sectors are played out against each other. I was hoping this book would inform the way I, as a non-expert, think about links between both spheres and perhaps better grasp how tax avoidance and inequality fit into the picture. I was not disappointed.” Franziska Mager
“There you have it: nobody but the “Entrepreneurial State,” through approaches already successfully tested in the US or novel ones, can afford to be crazy enough, foolish enough, to fund curiosity-driven research, basic research, fundamental research, whatever you want to call it!” Dr. Jean-Claude Worms
“One of the most interesting thinkers out there right now is Mariana Mazzucato, who studies what she calls “the entrepreneurial state” and innovation.”
“Only Labour can create what the innovation economist Mariana Mazzucato calls the entrepreneurial state: a bold, risk-taking government that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with business in the creation of new jobs and industries.” Chi Onwurah
“Mme Mazzucato, donc, considère qu’il est grand temps de réinventer le capitalisme, en veillant à ce que tout un chacun en bénéficie, et non plus une infime partie des gens au détriment de la majorité des autres.”
“Of course the Tories are finding it difficult to even begin to imagine how an invigorated, entrepreneurial state could work to help create jobs, investment, skills, security and prosperity for all.” Chi Onwurah MP
“Apple added technology integration and design, but did none of the innovation heavy lifting. Mazzucato concludes that the State, not private firms, is the real disruptive agent.” Alberto Cottica
“After I cited Mariana Mazzucato when setting out Labour’s vision of an industrial policy I wondered which other economists were cited in parliament and what that said about the economic influences on our parliamentary debates… It looks as if Adam Smith and Keynes generally battle it out for first place with Stiglitz and Friedman in third and fourth but Mazzucato is now level with Marx and rising.” Chi Onwurah MP
“Mariana Mazzucato has written extensively about the role of government investment in technological innovation. And it’s enormous, at nearly all stages of development.” Jeff Vockrodt
“La profesora Mazzucato ha sido una luz en medio de la oscuridad de la ortodoxia y la austeridad… Para Mazzucato, el motor primigenio de la innovación disruptiva, la esencia misma del capitalismo, se activa mediante inversión pública en proyectos estratégicos que jamás financiaría el mercado por su nivel de riesgo.” Xavier Ferras
“As Mazzucato and Jacobs assert, we can indeed have the economy and the society that we actively choose to build: Well-targeted policies can both propel the leaders of the global economic contest and ease the plight of those who are momentarily on globalization’s downside.” Christopher Colford
“The economist Mariana Mazzucato is best known for debunking the idea that innovation is a purely private sector activity.” Tim Page
“Mazzucato erklärt das so: Technologien lange vor der Marktreife mit großen Summen zu unterstützen, zahlt sich für private Investoren einfach nicht aus. Viel zu groß ist das Risiko, dass doch nichts daraus wird. Viel zu lange die Zeitspanne, bis Geld aus der Investition zurückfließen könnte.” Patricia Huber
“The good news is that the intellectual vacuum on the left is being filled, and there is no longer any reason to believe in the tyranny of ‘no alternatives’. Politicians on the left have less and less reason not to draw on ‘respectable’ academic firepower in economics.” Dani Rodrik
“Mariana Mazzucato, who champions the idea that government research is behind most of our major innovations… has been joined by some very heavy hitters: Daron Acemoglu of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and James Robinson of the University of Chicago.” Noah Smith
“Mazzucato argues that politicians need to have the courage to play the long game by focusing on the key technologies and approaches that are going to fuel business innovation in the long term.” Christian Bason
“But if Big Pharma is not committed to research, what is it doing?” Mazzucato asks. “First, it is well known that Big Pharma spends more on marketing than on R&D.” Jake Johnson
“As science policy researchers, including the recent work of Mariana Mazzucato have shown, the assumption of thriving entrepreneurial start-ups is more ideological myth than reality. In reality, most research and development is undertaken by large firms, and Australia’s large firms – many in the mining and agricultural sector – have not been big spenders on R&D.” Kanishka Jayasuriya and Carol Johnson
“Oddly enough, the whole millennial-entrepreneur-neo-liberal-capitalism solution theme fails to mention the very important and central role of the state in subsidizing such developments. Mariana Mazzucato has noted in the book The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs Private Sector Myths the central part played by state funding in all of these so-called business entrepreneurship.” Nelson Valdes
“Universities, now becoming a tool for commercialisation, must be returned to their roots as institutions of social mobility and collegiality. Universities should be connected to both industry and community.
In the near-term, the left needs to remind voters of the role of Government in promoting innovation – see Mariana Mazzucato’s The Entrepreneurial State.” Aden Date
“I had the pleasure of taking part in two interesting days at the Lerchendal conference in Trondheim this week. For me the most interesting part was listening to Mariana Mazzucato redefining the role of innovation policy in technological and social change.” Per Koch
“And yet that notion – that the ‘private sector generates wealth while the public sector spends it’ – is near ubiquitous in contemporary policy discourse, as pervasive as it is stultifying and specious. It was, however, subjected to a sustained attack by Mariana Mazzucato in her much-discussedThe Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths.” Paul Gilbert
“The New Economics debate series, announced by John McDonnell earlier this month, formally launched on Tuesday with a powerhouse lecture by Mariana Mazzucato, a member of Labour’s star-studded Economic Advisory Committee.” Louie Woodall
“Mazzucato, a distinguished economist at the University of Sussex, shows that the neoliberal caricature of the hapless state is an ideological fiction, obscuring the essential role that successful capitalist states assume in investing heavily in the development of long-term innovation. ” Gord Doctorow
‘The economist Mariana Mazzucato has written extensively about how … state institutions and state-led partnerships can take bigger risks.’ … ‘The state is better placed to be a venture capitalist than most venture capitalists.’ Craig Ryan
‘Mariana Mazzucato outlined a useful framework for the BBC’s role in innovating and standard-setting broadcasting going beyond notions of market failure… Here is a first attempt to apply this framework to BBC governance reform.’ Damian Tambini
Read Professor Mazzucato’s blog on the market creating and shaping role of the BBC here.
“Mazzucato debunks common myths about how innovation works & shapes a new narrative on how to grow a robust and inclusive economy.” Lynn Parramore
This was first posted on the Insitute for New Economic Thinking blog (23/10/2015) and also appeared on Salon, Naked Capitalism and AlterNet
“Wielding a mass of data and sharply honed arguments, [Professor Mazzucato] dismantles the notion of the laggard state at odds with a dynamic private sector, asserting that, in fact, the opposite is true: The private sector finds the courage to invest and innovate only after the state has made the initial high-risk investments.”
“The panel includes Joe Stiglitz, the US Nobel prize-winner, Simon Wren-Lewis, Mariana Mazzucato, Danny Blanchflower and Thomas Piketty.
These are economists who’ve written powerfully about the need for new taxes, especially on the wealth of the rich (Piketty most famously) and on the role that governments can play in sparking wealth-creating innovation (a tour de force by Mazzucato).” Robert Peston
“Should the government be an angel investor? Mariana Mazzucato thinks so… [she] argues that government funding is essential to the research and development that creates the companies of tomorrow.” Noah Smith
by Izabella Kaminska and Angel Lindsay, FT Alphaville
“Mazzucato’s core view therefore is that policymakers must think big and intervene on levels that can shape and forge markets from scratch. But also, most importantly, to ensure that once these markets prove profitable that returns don’t get entirely coopted by megalithic private companies which never took the initial risk.”
by Ben Gwalchmai, The Huffington Post Blog
“Mariana Mazzucato, professor of economics at the University of Sussex, has argued recently on America’s PBS that it isn’t austerity that Greece needs but public spending and that Germany is the leading example of why.”
by Rodrigo Barbosa de Vasconcelos, O Jornal de Todos os Brasis
“A economista e PhD Mariana Mazzucato, professora de Economia da Inovação da Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), da Universidade de Sussex, no Reino Unido, disse que o setor privado brasileiro precisa de mais pesquisa e desenvolvimento para ser mais competitivo.”
by Conversa Afiada
“Para a PhD Mariana Mazzucato, o Brasil tem que chamar o setor privado à frente. “As empresas brasileiras fizeram pouquíssimos investimentos em pesquisa e desenvolvimento. Há muita inércia. Então, em vez de ficarem focando nos problemas do setor público vocês deveriam provocar o setor privado”, defendeu a PhD”
by Marketives
“In het boek ‘The Entrepeneurial State’ maakt Mariana Mazzucato korte metten met bovenstaande ideeën en overtuigingen. Uit haar verhaal blijkt namelijk dat echte radicale innovatie bijna altijd bij de overheid vandaan komt. Overheden blijken gewaagde investeringen te doen en innovatieve denkers op de loonlijst te hebben staan.”
by Andrea Stroppa, The Huffington Post
“In her 2013 book dispelling the private vs. public sector myths, Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of Science and Technology at the University of Sussex, clarifies that while it is true that most of today’s major technologies were born in the Silicon Valley, they were actually developed thanks to public funds directly provided by the US government. Therefore public institutions should always protect and promote innovation, particularly in our borderless high-tech landscape.”
by Christopher Colford, World Bank Blog
” “This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” That quip sprang readily to mind this week – it was coined in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy, when he welcomed a group of Nobel laureates to the White House – at a paradigm-shifting, synapse-snapping seminar featuring Prof. Mariana Mazzucato and other leading economics scholars, who convened for a think-tank symposium on innovation policy and competitiveness strategy.”
by Audrie Van Veen, Europeanology
“Overheden moeten inspirerende doelen stellen voor innovatie, zegt Marianna Mazzucato, terwijl ze een aantal innovatiemythes doorprikt. Wat kunnen steden en regio’s hiervan leren?”
by Claudio Bocci, Il Giornale delle Fondazioni
“Grande successo per la tesi del fortunato testo «Lo Stato innovatore» di Mariana Mazzucato, romana di nascita e inglese d’adozione, secondo la quale la crescita di un paese sia una variabile dipendente, prima ancora che della quantità, della composizione della spesa pubblica.”
by NDPIM, Novelle Del Piccolo Imprenditore Marchigiano
“Quale sarà la verità? Proviamo prima a capire chi sono queste due signore. La signora sulla sinistra è Mariana Mazzucato docente di economia all’università del Sussex. La signora sulla destra è Federica Guidi neo ministro dello sviluppo economico e rampollo della migliore imprenditoria italiana. Tra le due signore c’è una certa diversità di vedute su come dovrebbero girare le ruote dell’economia.”
by Dani Rodrik, Project Syndicate.
“As Mariana Mazzucato has pointed out, the state already plays a significant role in funding new technologies. The Internet and many of the key technologies used in the iPhone have been spillovers of government subsidized R&D programs and US Department of Defense projects.”
by Robert Graboyes, PBSO Newshour.
Professor Mazzucato’s work is cited in a PBS Making Sense blog as contrary to the arguments made by Robert Graboyes.
by Andrew Fisher and Mick Brooks, LEAP Economics
“Mazzucato detonates a grenade under the Friedmanite discourse about markets, busting the myth that innovation, entrepreneurialism and dynamism are the preserve of the private sector and the state is a brake on those attributes.”
by Owen Tudor, Public Finance International
Owen Tudor, Head of the TUC’s European Union and International Relations department, references Professor Mazzucato’s Guardian Science blog in an analysis of Jean Claude Juncker’s investment plan.
Read Caroline Kuzemko’s blog about the lecture.
by Linda McQuaig, iPolitics.ca
“Mazzucato describes the state’s pivotal role in developing the computer industry, the Internet, nanotech, biotech, the emerging green tech sector — even the algorithm that was crucial to the success to Google.”
by Tom Cheshire, Sky News
“As Mariana Mazzucato shows in her book The Entrepreneurial State, the core technologies that make up the iPhone, from GPS to the touchscreen, were the result of government research.”
by Vincenzo Vita, Articolo 21
“Le richieste del governo a Bruxelles di rinviare, rinviare sono la plateale dimostrazione dell’assurdità di quei voti parlamentari nella passata legislatura: eccessi di zelo, neppure richiesti. Un’alternativa economica si fonda sul rovesciamento della soggezione al mercato e al privato. E’ la tesi chiara e convincente di Mariana Mazzucato ne “Lo Stato innovatore” (ed. Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2014).”
by Luigi Cristiani, “La mano invisibile è quella dello Stato?”
“Proprio sull’antitesi degli investimenti in R&S si inserisce il libro della The Entrepreneurial State di Mariana Mazzucato, docente di Economia dell’Innovazione allo Spru (Science and Technology Policy Research) presso l’Università del Sussex, tradotto in italiano con il titolo “Lo stato innovatore”.”
by Robert Atkinson, “Winners only the state can pick: Mariana Mazzucato’s The Entrepreneurial State”
“Mariana Mazzucato‘s The Entrepreneurial State is a book with an ambitious goal: to take our understanding of our government’s role in the economy and turn it on its head. Mazzucato argues that the state is an innovative, entrepreneurial actor in ways that the private sector cannot be, because only the state possesses the vision, resources and long-term commitment necessary to facilitate large-scale or speculative innovation.”
by Alex Sayf Cummings, “I Paid for Your iPhone: Mariana Mazzucato’s Spirited Defense of the Public Sector and Its Crucial Role in Innovation”
“Troubled schools? Privatize them. Social Security in trouble? Turn it over to Wall Street. Healthcare costs out of control? Add in more “markets,” and stir. Mariana Mazzucato is here to change all that. Like Piketty, the University of Sussex economist is determined to change the discussion about economics and innovation.”
by Mette Rodgers, “Staten er innovationens stærkeste motor”
“Det er dybt skadeligt, at staten konstant angribes for at være for stor, for dyr, uøkonomisk og magtfuld, mener professor i innovationsøkonomi Mariana Mazzucato. Det kvæler statens vigtige rolle som igangsætter inden for forskning og innovation, siger hun”
by Clint Wilder, “Exploding the Myth That Government Can’t Innovate”
“And rarely have I heard this conventional wisdom debunked as eloquently and passionately as by economist and professor Mariana Mazzucato, a keynote speaker at the fifth annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit outside Washington, D.C. late last month.”
by Frank Gersdorf, “Geen boodschap zonder boodschapper”
“Vorige week was professor Mariana Mazzucato in Nederland. Een innovatiegoeroe van formaat. Van Italiaanse komaf, nu hoogleraar aan de Universiteit van Sussex in Brighton. Ze sprak voor een gezelschap van financiële professionals in de sfeervolle oude raadzaal van het vroegere stadhuis in Amsterdam, nu The Grand.”
by Mike King, “Hamiltonians 1 – Jeffersonians 0: The Entrepreneurial State”
“Mazuccato’s outstanding contribution to this debate lies in taking Apple, a poster-boy for laissez-faire, and showing how some of its most lucrative products were deeply dependent on State-funded research and State start-up funding, the outcomes of ‘Hamiltonian’ policy.”
by Christopher Colford, “Innovator-in-Chief: The Public Sector – Catalyst of Creativity”
by Keynesblog, “Elogio dello Stato innovatore”
(article in Italian)
“Da internet al Gps, dalle batterie allo schermo touch. Senza la ricerca pubblica l’iphone non sarebbe mai nato. Steve Jobs ha integrato tecnologie già prodotte dallo Stato in un oggetto commercialmente appetibile, evitando il rischio di investimenti senza un chiaro ritorno immediato. Mariana Mazzucato, nota studiosa italo-americana sui temi dell’innovazione, smonta molti dei luoghi comuni sul ruolo dello Stato.”
by Judy Hirst, “Don’t tell Sid”
by Flore Vasseur, “TEDGlobal 2013 : Trois idées pour reprendre la main sur l’économie”
by Persico and Iavonesi, “Il TED dietro le quinte/2| Chi finanzia la vera innovazione? Lo Stato”
(blog in Italian)
“E fra gli interventi più interessanti, senza un filo di campalinismo, scegliamo quello di Mariana Mazzucato. Docente di economia presso la University of Sussex (UK), Mariana Mazzucato padroneggia perfettamente il palco ed è a suo agio mentre presenta al pubblico di TED il frutto della sua ricerca contenuta nel suo ultimo libro di prossima pubblicazione, “The Entrepreneurial State”.”
by Stian Westlake, “British higher education’s Hayek appreciation club”
“Sometimes you’ll hear calls for greater intervention, or indeed for outright revolution: British academia is after all a broad church. But some kind of industrial activism is the baseline, especially among non-economists. It’s a view of the world that wouldn’t be out of place in a column by Will Hutton, Larry Elliott or Mariana Mazzucato.”
by CaSE, “What’s driving the UK’s innovation system?”
by Keynesblog, “Alesina e Giavazzi sbagliano: Stato e innovazione sono come marito e moglie”
by Frank Miedema, “Professor Mazzucato legt het nog één keer uit”
by Yanis Varoufakis, “In Praise of Public Investment: On the importance of Mariana Mazzucato’s article in The Guardian”
“Two are the greatest untruths that have inflicted major damage upon our understanding of how social economies work; and, by extension, upon our societies. First, there is the pseudo-‘law’ of ‘crowding out’; i.e. the illusory belief that when public investment increases private investment suffers. Secondly, there is a widespread misconception that, under capitalism, value is created privately and then collectivised via the state (when, in truth, all value is produced collectively before it is privatised). In this post, taking my cue from Mariana Mazzucato’s excellent piece in today’s The Guardian, I shall be posting some strong words against the first illusion.”
by Miriam Frankel, “UK in bottom half of global R&D tax credit ranking”
by Stephen Curry, “The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato”
“[…]The case for public spending on basic R&D is taken as read. Rather what Mazzucato is keen to address is the role of the state in enabling research discoveries to be developed into new products and even, in the most influential cases, new markets. Rather than simply charting the well-known anecdotes of blue-skies research leading to successful businesses (admirably covered in the 2010 Royal Society Report, The Scientific Century), this short book aims to dissect how that process happens most effectively.”
by Jessica Shankleman and James Murray, “Treasury urged to boost green economy through Clegg’s infrastructure drive”
by James Murray, “High net worth individuals, the Valley of Death, and the ‘tragedy’ of the Green Investment Bank”
by Tim Page
“Then, in the ‘Comment and Debate’ section of the Guardian, the always-impressive Mariana Mazzucato debunks the argument that growth can be brought about by “structural reforms”, such as cutting red tape or making it easer to hire and fire workers. Mariana points out that those companies which invest in new technology, human capital and R&D, and are located in countries where public spending in these areas is high, are able to produce more competitive and better value products. She also highlights that Scandinavia, with its large welfare state and stringent labour laws, has been crisis-resilient because it invests in innovation.”
by mrweb.com, “Study Probes Role of Finance in the Economy”