The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Myths in Risk and Innovation

266 Pages·2013·2.26 MB·English

by  Mariana Mazzucato

The Entrepreneurial State
ANTHEM FRONTIERS OF GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
The Anthem Frontiers of Global Political Economy series seeks to trigger and attract new thinking in global
political economy, with particular reference to the prospects of emerging markets and developing countries.
Written by renowned scholars from different parts of the world, books in this series provide historical,
analytical and empirical perspectives on national economic strategies and processes, the implications of
global and regional economic integration, the changing nature of the development project, and the diverse
global-to-local forces that drive change. Scholars featured in the series extend earlier economic insights to
provide fresh interpretations that allow new understandings of contemporary economic processes.
Editorial Board
Kevin Gallagher (series editor) – Boston University, USA
Jayati Ghosh (series editor) – Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Stephanie Blankenburg – School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK
Ha-Joon Chang – University of Cambridge, UK
Wan-Wen Chu – RCHSS, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Léonce Ndikumana – University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA
Alica Puyana Mutis – Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLASCO-México), Mexico
Matías Vernengo – Banco Central de la República Argentina, Argentina
Robert Wade – London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK
Yu Yongding – Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), China
ANTHEM OTHER CANON ECONOMICS
Anthem Press and The Other Canon Foundation are pleased to present the Anthem Other Canon Economics
series. The Other Canon – also described as ‘reality economics’ – studies the economy as a real object
rather than as the behaviour of a model economy based on core axioms, assumptions and techniques. The
series includes both classical and contemporary works in this tradition, spanning evolutionary, institutional
and Post-Keynesian economics, the history of economic thought and economic policy, economic sociology
and technology governance, and works on the theory of uneven development and in the tradition of the
German historical school.
Editorial Board
Erik S. Reinert (series editor) – The Other Canon Foundation, Norway and Tallinn University of
Technology, Estonia
Rainer Kattel (series editor) – Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Jan Kregel (series editor) – University of Missouri, USA and Tallinn University
of Technology, Estonia
Wolfgang Drechsler (series editor) – Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Ha-Joon Chang – University of Cambridge, UK
Mario Cimoli – UN-ECLAC, Chile
Jayati Ghosh – Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Steven Kaplan – Cornell University, USA and University of Versailles, Paris
Bengt-Åke Lundvall – Aalborg University, Denmark
Richard Nelson – Columbia University, USA
Keith Nurse – University of the West Indies
Patrick O’Brien – London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK
Carlota Perez – Judge Institute, University of Cambridge, UK
Alessandro Roncaglia – Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Jomo Kwame Sundaram – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
The Entrepreneurial State
Debunking Public vs. Private
Sector Myths
Mariana Mazzucato
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2013
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
Copyright © Mariana Mazzucato 2013
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mazzucato, Mariana, 1968–
The entrepreneurial state : debunking public vs. private sector myths / Mariana
Mazzucato.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-85728-252-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Entrepreneurship–Government policy.
2. Technological innovations–Government policy.
3. Research, Industrial. 4. Diffusion of innovations. I. Title.
HB615.M372797 2013
338’.04–dc23
2013017536
ISBN-13: 978 0 85728 252 1 (Pbk)
ISBN-10: 0 85728 252 2 (Pbk)
This title is also available as an eBook.

This book is dedicated to my mother Alessandra, whose spirit continues to
influence all those who met her – affecting our willingness and ability to
understand and transform the world with firmness, generosity and grace. And to
my father whose battle to survive without her has not diminished his nearly life-
long pursuit of perhaps the only really renewable source of energy – nuclear
fusion.
As a matter of fact, capitalist economy is not and cannot be stationary. Nor is it
merely expanding in a steady manner. It is incessantly being revolutionized from
within by new enterprise, i.e., by the intrusion of new commodities or new
methods of production or new commercial opportunities into the industrial
structure as it exists at any moment.
Joseph Schumpeter (1942 [2003], 13)
The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are
doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those
things which at present are not done at all.
John Maynard Keynes (1926, xxx)
It is a popular error that bureaucracy is less flexible than private enterprise. It
may be so in detail, but when large scale adaptations have to be made, central
control is far more flexible. It may take two months to get an answer to a letter
from a government department, but it takes twenty years for an industry under
private enterprise to readjust itself to a fall in demand.
Joan Robinson (1978, 27)
Where were you guys [venture capitalists] in the ’50s and ’60s when all the
funding had to be done in the basic science? Most of the discoveries that have
fuelled [the industry] were created back then.
Paul Berg, 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner
(quoted in Henderson and Schrage 1984)