What does an entrepreneurial society needs most? An entrepreneurial state, Mariana Mazzucato argues:
one that through visionary and strategic public investments, distributed across the innovation chain, can create animal spirits in private businesses. Entrepreneurs then see growth opportunities, and business investment follows.
Her keynesian formula includes four steps.
1.First, routes and directions.
If “let the market decide” is an inadequate and ineffective response to the challenges we face, how can we find democratically enduring ways to choose particular missions and set the routes and directions for change?
2.Second, organizations.
How can we build learning organizations in the public sector that can welcome risk, learn from failure, discover, explore, and understand when to turn the tap off? This means understanding policy as a process, one in which learning from failure is accepted and welcomed. Talking about public organizations as mission-driven — not merely as facilitators for others — will also help in recruiting the talented people that visionary public organizations need.
3.Third, assessment.
Static cost-benefit analysis cannot capture the transformative impact of strategic, market-creating public investments. New dynamic assessment tools are needed, based on a much richer understanding of public value creation.
4. Fourth, risks and rewards.
The wrong narrative about who the risk takers are has led to a distribution of rewards that does not reflect the true distribution of risk. If taxpayers are taking the biggest risks during the uncertain early stages of the innovation process, they should share in the rewards.
(Via: Harvard Business Review)
Oliver* 