Excellent book which surgically challenges the narratives of state inability to innovate and how innovation is spurred by the private market and VCs. Makes thoughtful connections for lack of future innovation to come as a result. Would give 5 stars; dragged on longer than I felt it should have.

Mazzucato makes a very convincing case for continued State support of investment into key R&D initiatives, where government has showed a strong string of successes throughout the past 100 years. She demonstrates how prior government funded programs and initiatives have paid back private industry and society in the form of key technologies and platforms. One need look no further than the Internet to see this.

In engineering management graduate work (not exactly a bastion of progressive thought), one comes across numerous DARPA related projects that are viewed as great successes. Yet conservatives will scream to the hilt about examples like Solyndra (which Mazzucato addresses fully) that show that the Govt can’t invest correctly, essentially saying that the Govt must bat 100% with every investment dollar, while private equity has a success rate that often falls short (also conservatives have no problem with privatizing gains but socializing losses when the values are high enough – see the ’08 crash and the current Covid bailouts as examples). Mazzucato argues how Govt is best positioned for a number of important areas for funding – areas that private industry views as too risky to take on and where scale is needed (fusion research as a quintessential example). My only quibble with the book is that the topic is so common sense that there shouldn’t need to be a full length volume describing this, yet here we are in 2020 and this is not a convincing argument to many in the US.

Interesting but very very dense.

Well-written and informative

There’s this myth that governments don’t innovate. In reality, innovative technologies come from government research/government-funded research all the time. The internet, Microprocessors, WiFi, Cellular networks, GPS, Solar panels, Lithium Ion batteries, touchscreen technology, LCD screens, even Siri itself. All created by government R&D or funded by governments. Look at space travel. Government funding & research trailblazed, now the private sector is leading the charge. The government-funded Human Genome Project gave us $100 genetic tests to find your cousins via Ancestry(dot)com or see which diseases you might be genetically prone to. GPS, the greatest government-funded endeavor ever. Like I keep saying, learn your history before repeating common misconceptions.

Highly Recommended.

Interesting concept but the author does not go hard enough to the core issues (in my opinion). The author wants the state to reap the benefits of capitalism while failing to scrutinize capitalism itself as a viable option. she also treats the state as a single actor with homogenous interests. The writing style was hard to get through. Very detailed case studies, and lots of repetition.