Questioning The Entrepreneurial State

The 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have made the authorities to increasingly turn inward and use ethnocentrism, protectionism, and top-down approaches to guide policy on trade, competition, and industrial development. The continuing aftereffects of such policies range from the rise and seeming success of authoritarian states, rise of populist and protectionist trends, and evolving academic agendas inspiring the reemergence of top-down industrial policies across the world. This open access edited volume contains contributions from over 30 scholars with expertise in economics, innovation, management, and economic history. The chapters offer unique theoretical and empirical contributions discussing topics such as how industrial policies affect risk, incentives, and information for investments. They also address the policy perspectives on new technologies such as AI and its implications for market entry, the role for independent entrepreneurship in increasingly regulated markets, and whether governments should focus on market interventions or institutional capacity-building. Questioning the Entrepreneurial State initiates a much sought-after debate on the notion of an Entrepreneurial State. It discusses the dangers of top-down approaches to industrial policy, examines lessons from such approaches for future policy design, and calls attention to the progress of open and contestable markets in a sound economy and society. “Creative destruction, innovation and entrepreneurship are at the core of economic growth. The government has a clear role, to provide the basic fabric of a dynamic society, but industrial policy and state-owned companies are the boulevard of broken dreams and unrealized visions. This important message is convincingly stated in Questioning the Entrepreneurial State.” Anders Borg, former Minister of Finance, Sweden “Misreading the dynamism of American entrepreneurship, European intellectuals and policy makers have embraced a dangerous fantasy: catching up requires constructing an entrepreneurial state. This book provides a vital antidote: The entrepreneur comes first: The state may support. It cannot lead.” Amar Bhidé, Thomas Schmidheiny Professor of International Business, Tufts University “This important new book subjects the emergence of the entrepreneurial state, which reflects a shift in the locus of entrepreneurship from the individual to the public sector, to the scrutiny of rigorous analysis. The resulting concerns, flaws and biases inherent in the entrepreneurial state exposed are both alarming and sobering. The skill and scholarly craftsmanship brought to bear in this crucial analysis is evident throughout the book, along with the even, but ultimately consequential thinking of the authors. A must read for researchers and thought leaders in business and policy." David Audtretsch, Distinguished Professor, Ameritech Chair of Economic Development, Indiana University

Companies like Google and Apple heralded the information revolution, and opened the doors for Silicon Valley to grow into an engine of dazzling technological development, that today champions the free market that engendered it against the supposedly stifling encroachment of government regulation. But is that really the case? In this sharp and controversial expose, The Entrepreneurial State, Mariana Mazzucato debunks the pervasive myth that the state is a laggard, bureaucratic apparatus at odds with a dynamic private sector. Instead she reveals in case study after case study that, in fact, the opposite is true: the state is our boldest and most valuable innovator. The technology revolution would never have happened without support from the US Government. The breakthroughs--GPS, touch-screen displays, the Internet, and voice-activated AI--that enabled legendary Apple products to be smart successes were, in fact, all developed with support from the state. Mazzucato reveals that many successful entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs integrated state-funded technological developments into their products and then reaped the rewards themselves. The algorithm behind Google’s search engine was initially sponsored by NASA. And 75% of NMEs--new, often-ground-breaking drugs not derivative of existing substances--trace their research to National Institutes of Health (NIH) labs. The American government, it turns out, has been enormously successfully at stimulating scientific and technological advancement. But by 2009, just some months following the Great Recession--the US government, constrained by austerity measures, started disinvesting from its holdings in research fields like health, energy, electronics. The trend is likely to continue, and the repercussions of these policies could wreak havoc on our technology and science sectors. But Mazzucato remains optimistic. If managed correctly, state-sponsored development of Green technology, for instance, could be as efficacious as suburbanization & post-war reconstruction in the mid-twentieth century, and unleash a wide-spread golden age in the global economy. The limitations of natural resources and the threat of global warming could become the most powerful driver of growth, employment, and innovation within just one generation--but to be successful, the Green Revolution will depend on the initiatives of proactive governments. By not admitting the State’s role in economic and technological progress, we are socializing only the risks of investing in innovation, while privatizing the rewards in the hands of only a few businesses. This, Mazzucato argues, hurts both future of innovation and equity in modern-day capitalism. For policy-makers, Silicon Valley start-up founders, venture-capitalists, and economists alike, The Entrepreneurial State stirs up much needed debate and offers up a brilliant corrective to spurious beliefs: to thrive, American businesses have always and will need to depend on the support of our country’s most audacious entrepreneur, the state.

Award-winning economist Mariana Mazzucato’s famously incisive international bestseller debunking the pervasive myth of the inept state versus an innovative private sector—with a new preface by the author According to conventional wisdom, innovation is best left to the bold entrepreneurs of the private sector, and government should get out of the way. But what if that wasn't case? What if, from the inventions of Silicon Valley to medical breakthroughs, the public sector has actually been the most courageous and valuable risk-taker of all? Critically acclaimed and influential thinker and scholar Mariana Mazzucato argues comprehensively against the myth of a lumbering, bureaucratic state versus a dynamic, innovative private sector with remarkable original and deep research. In a series of case studies—from nanotechnology to the emerging green tech of today—Mazzucato reveals that the opposite is true: the private sector only finds the courage to invest after an entrepreneurial state has made the high-risk investments. The Entrepreneurial State reveals how every technology that makes the iPhone so “smart” was actually funded by the government—from the Internet and GPS technology, to touch-screen displays and voice-activated Siri. In the history of modern capitalism, the State has not only fixed market failures, but has also actively shaped and created markets. In doing so, it sometimes wins and sometimes fails. Yet by not admitting the State’s role in active risk taking, we've created an "innovation system" where the public sector socializes risks while privatizing reward, as Mazzucato controversially argues. This bold and provocative book considers how we adopted this dysfunctional dynamic, and then how we can overcome it so that economic growth can be not only "smart" but "inclusive" as well.

The world's most popular products, from the iPhone to Google Search, were funded not by private companies, but the taxpayer. In this sharp and controversial international bestseller, an award-winning economist debunks the pervasive myth that the government is sluggish and inept, and at odds with a dynamic private sector. She reveals in detailed case studies that the opposite is true: the state is, and has been, our boldest and most valuable innovator. Denying this history is leading us down the wrong path. A select few get credit for what is an intensely collective effort, and the US government has started disinvesting from innovation. The repercussions could stunt economic growth and increase inequality. Mazzucato teaches us how to reverse this trend before it is too late.

List of Tables and Figures; List of Acronyms; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Thinking Big Again; Chapter 1: From Crisis Ideology to the Division of Innovative Labour; Chapter 2: Technology, Innovation and Growth; Chapter 3: Risk-Taking State: From 'De-risking' to 'Bring It On!'; Chapter 4: The US Entrepreneurial State; Chapter 5: The State behind the iPhone; Chapter 6: Pushing vs. Nudging the Green Industrial Revolution; Chapter 7: Wind and Solar Power: Government Success Stories and Technology in Crisis; Chapter 8: Risks and Rewards: From Rotten Apples to Symbiotic Ecosystems; Chapter 9: So.

A common narrative of the post-World War II economists was that the State is indispensable for guiding investment and fostering innovation. They claimed that the wealth of the modern world is the result of past State guidance and that what is needed for future economic growth is more State guidance. This position has recently been rejuvenated in reaction to the Great Recession of 2008. The truth is that the enriched modern economy was not a product of State coercion. It was a product of a change in political and social rhetoric in northwestern Europe from 1517 to 1789. The Great Enrichment, that is, came from human ingenuity emancipated from the bottom up, not human ingenuity directed from the top down. The true question is what on balance is the best way to organize innovation—by the “wise State” or by commercially tested betterment? The American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was founded in 1933 as the first independent voice for sound economics in the United States. Today it publishes ongoing research, hosts educational programs, publishes books, sponsors interns and scholars, and is home to the world-renowned Bastiat Society and the highly respected Sound Money Project. The American Institute for Economic Research is a 501c3 public charity. The Adam Smith Institute is one of the world's leading think tanks, recognised as the best domestic and international economic policy think-tank in the UK and ranked 2nd in the world among Independent Think Tanks by the University of Pennsylvania. Independent, non-profit and non-partisan, the Adam Smith Institute works to promote free market, neoliberal ideas through research, publishing, media outreach, and education. The Institute is today at the forefront of making the case for free markets and a free society in the United Kingdom. The Institute was founded in the 1970s, as post-war socialism reached its high-watermark. Then, as now, its purpose was to educate the public about free markets and economic policy, and to inject sound ideas into the public debate.

Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value of what they do? At the heart of today's financial and economic crisis is a problem hiding in plain sight. In modern capitalism, value-extraction - the siphoning off of profits, from shareholders' dividends to bankers' bonuses - is rewarded more highly than value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. We misidentify takers as makers, and have lost sight of what value really means. Once a central plank of economic thought, this concept of value - what it is, why it matters to us - is simply no longer discussed. Yet, argues Mariana Mazzucato in this penetrating and passionate new book, if we are to reform capitalism - to radically transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue feeding it - we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Who is creating it, who is extracting it, and who is destroying it? Answers to these questions are key if we want to replace the current parasitic system with a type of capitalism that is more sustainable, more symbiotic: that works for us all. The Value of Everything will reignite a long-needed debate about the kind of world we really want to live in.

The Entrepreneurial State explores the leading role that the State has played in generating innovation and economic growth in modern capitalism.