Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths

The Entrepreneurial State

10th anniversary edition updated with a new preface

10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION: UPDATED WITH A NEW PREFACE 
 
'Superb ... At a time when government action of any kind is ideologically suspect, and entrepreneurship is unquestioningly lionized, the book's importance cannot be understated' Guardian 
 
According to conventional wisdom, innovation is best left to the dynamic entrepreneurs of the private sector, and government should get out of the way. But what if all this was wrong? What if, from Silicon Valley to medical breakthroughs, the public sector has been the boldest and most valuable risk-taker of all? 
 
'A brilliant book' Martin Wolf, Financial Times 
 
'One of the most incisive economic books in years' Jeff Madrick, New York Review of Books 
 
'Mazzucato is right to argue that the state has played a central role in producing game-changing breakthroughs' Economist 
 
'Read her book. It will challenge your thinking' Forbes

Read her book. It will challenge your thinking

One of the most incisive economics books in years

This book has a controversial thesis. But it is basically right

Mariana Mazzucato (Author, Preface By) 
Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose. Her previous posts include the RM Phillips Professorial Chair at the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University. 
 
She is the winner of international prizes including the Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 2021, Italy's highest civilian honour, the 2020 John von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Most recently, Pope Francis appointed her to the Pontifical Academy for Life for bringing 'more humanity' to the world. 
 
As well as The Entrepreneurial State, she is the author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (2018), Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (2021), and The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies (2023). 
 
She advises policy makers around the world on innovation-led, inclusive and sustainable growth. Her current roles have included for example Chair of the World Health Organization's Council on the Economics of Health for All, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, Co-Chair of the Council on Urban Initiatives, and member of the South African President's Economic Advisory Council. Previously, through her role as Special Advisor for the EC Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation (2017-2019), she authored the high-impact report on Mission-Oriented Research and Innovation in the European Union, turning 'missions' into a crucial new instrument in the European Commission's Horizon innovation programme, and more recently, authored a report with the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) on Transformational Change in Latin America and the Caribbean: A mission-oriented approach.

Conventional wisdom holds that innovation is the preserve of the private sector, best left in the hands of that modern day folk hero - the lone entrepreneur. In this popular tale, the role of the public sector is simply to get out of the way, at best fixing market failures, in order to facilitate our daring hero's bold, risk-taking endeavours. But what if this powerful, contemporary myth is wrong? 
 
In this sharp and controversial expose, Mariana Mazzucato comprehensively debunks the myth of a lumbering, bureaucratic state weighing down a dynamic private sector, to reveal how public investments have been behind many of the greatest innovations of our time. From the technologies that make the iPhone 'smart', to biotech, pharmaceuticals and today's emerging green technologies, it is the state that has been the investor of first resort, our boldest and most valuable innovator. Meanwhile, the private sector only finds the courage to invest after the State has made the truly pioneering, high-risk investments.

A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

Mission Economy

'One of the most influential economists in the world' Wired 
 
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, capitalism was stuck. It had no answers to a host of problems, including disease, inequality, the digital divide and, perhaps most blatantly, the environmental crisis. Taking her inspiration from the 'moonshot' programmes which successfully co-ordinated public and private sectors on a massive scale, Mariana Mazzucato calls for the same level of boldness and experimentation to be applied to the biggest problems of our time. We must, she argues, rethink the capacities and role of government within the economy and society, and above all recover a sense of public purpose. Mission Economy, whose ideas are already being adopted around the world, offers a way out of our impasse to a more optimistic future.

The case for a new approach is overwhelming and Mariana Mazzucato's project is ambitious ... Mission Economy injects the kind of vision, ambition and imagination so desperately missing from government today ... All those in favour of a better future - of prosperity that is broadly shared, first class public services to be enjoyed by all, and a solution to the climate crisis - should read this book.

One of the most agile thinkers on post-Brexit, post-Covid Britain.

a wider and more radical critique of modern capitalism ... Mazzucato is a fantastic example of a charismatic policy entrepreneur having a real impact ... Mazzucato rightly shows that the state can rise to grand challenges and set ambitious missions.

A timely and optimistic vision ... Mazzucato presents her arguments so simply and clearly that they can seem obvious. In fact, they are revolutionary. Rethinking the role of government nationally and in the international economy - to put public purpose first and solve the problems that matter to people - are now the central questions for humanity

In Mission Economy Mariana Mazzucato argues that societies ought to abjure tired ideologies and embrace the policy approach that put astronauts on the Moon. By setting grand missions for themselves, she writes, and deploying the power of the state in practical ways, they can become more prosperous and equitable ... Mazzucato is an Italian-born economist of a heterodox bent, whose work has long challenged standard economic thinking about the role of markets and government in generating innovation ... compelling ... arresting

'This book is by an influential thinker on an important topic at a time when trust in direction by governments has risen greatly relative to trust in decentralised competition within markets. Mazzucato recommends goal-oriented innovation as the way forward for the world.'

Mission Economy proposes that we need to corral the state's energies into risky moonshots-just as JFK did with space travel. The mission then needs translating into a target whose achievement can be monitored. According to ex-Bank of England governor Mark Carney, the missing ingredient in economics is morality.

Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation &amp; Public Purpose. Her previous posts include the RM Phillips Professorial Chair at the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University. 
 
She is the winner of international prizes including the Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 2021, Italy's highest civilian honour, the 2020 John von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Most recently, Pope Francis appointed her to the Pontifical Academy for Life for bringing 'more humanity' to the world. 
 
As well as The Entrepreneurial State, she is the author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (2018), Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (2021), and The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies (2023). 
 
She advises policy makers around the world on innovation-led, inclusive and sustainable growth. Her current roles have included for example Chair of the World Health Organization's Council on the Economics of Health for All, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, Co-Chair of the Council on Urban Initiatives, and member of the South African President's Economic Advisory Council. Previously, through her role as Special Advisor for the EC Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation (2017-2019), she authored the high-impact report on Mission-Oriented Research and Innovation in the European Union, turning 'missions' into a crucial new instrument in the European Commission's Horizon innovation programme, and more recently, authored a report with the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) on Transformational Change in Latin America and the Caribbean: A mission-oriented approach.

The extraordinary efforts that took mankind to the moon 50 years ago were more than a scientific feat of aeronautics. They required new forms of collaboration between the public sector (notably, NASA) and private companies. This book asks: what if the same level of boldness - the boldness that set inspirational goals, took risks and explicitly recognized that this requires large spending but will be worthwhile in terms of long-term growth - was applied to the biggest problems of our time, climate change, disease and inequality, to name only a few? Mariana Mazzucato argues that applying innovation to societal goals and structuring government budgets more explicitly to the long-term, as the moon programme did, we can do government differently.

Making and Taking in the Global Economy

The Value of Everything

WINNER OF THE 2019 MADAME DE STAËL PRIZE AND THE 2018 LEONTIEF PRIZE FOR ADVANCING THE FRONTIERS OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE FT &amp; MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 
 
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 is rewarded more highly than value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. From companies driven solely to maximize shareholder value to astronomically high prices of medicines justified through big pharma's 'value pricing', we misidentify taking with making, 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 - radically to transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue feeding it - we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Which activities create it, which extract it, which destroy 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 reigniteS a long-needed debate about the kind of world we really want to live in.

A stimulating analysis of the underlying causes of inequality and growth which forces us to confront long-held beliefs about how economies work and who benefits. ... The book itself adds value by forcing us to confront these points.

Someone should make a musical out of this book. That is quite unlikely, I grant you, but not as unlikely as it sounds. In 1893 the Savoy theatre staged Gilbert and Sullivan's penultimate operetta, Utopia, Limited ... It is time to rework the idea and Mariana Mazzucato is a candidate to write the libretto.

As Mariana Mazzucuto's new book, published today, explains, our economy has been financialised and no longer rewards real value creation.

Mariana Mazzucato ... argues that we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from to heal a sick system.

Mariana Mazzucato offers an exposé of how value extractors and rent-seekers have been masquerading as value creators in the global economy. And, furthermore, how the conventional wisdom has indulged them in this.

In The Value of Everything, published last week, Mazzucato sharpens her focus, not only lauding the role of 'mission-oriented' public investment, but honing her critique of the private sector too.

Some economists merely interpret the world in various ways; others seek to change it. Mariana Mazzucato is an exemplar of the latter kind. The Italian-American is a restless thinker drawn to transformative, disruptive projects. ... Mazzucato's mission is to overturn the now dominant neoclassical theory of value. In the mid-19th century, she explained, an intellectual revolution occurred: rather than value determining price, price began to determine value.

The Value of Everything is receiving accolades on Twitter from finance ministers and student idealists alike, and is clearly set to be essential summer reading for civil servants.

Praise for The Entrepreneurial State: Conventional economics offers abstract models; conventional wisdom insists that the answer lies with private entrepreneurship. In this brilliant book, Mariana Mazzucato...argues that the former is useless and the latter incomplete.

One of the most incisive economic books in years.

Mariana Mazzucato

Rosie Collington

a forceful demolition job on the industry

timely ... the analysis is startling

Collington and Mazzucato have provided a meticulously researched anatomy of an industry not widely understood by those outside it. They have explained complex ideas and processes in clear terms, and brought them to life with a rich and engaging narrative style. They have eschewed a simple narrow moral attack on a few parasitic firms in favor of a clear-eyed view of the industry's origins and drivers, and they have outlined the stakes for the future in no uncertain terms. That last is the most important. The Big Con may present itself as an exposé of the consulting industry, but behind it lies a bigger and more urgent warning to reshape social priorities in an age of crisis.

Their point is that the great problem with the consulting business isn't so much one of corruption, but something else: consultants have wielded their expertise to give the impression of being indispensable. ... The book is intended in part as a rallying call for these companies and governments

compelling ... Mazzucato and Collington examine how this astonishing global rise in consultancy services came about. The clue is in the book's name-the big con ... the confidence trick arises from the ability to create an impression of value. ... Mazzucato and Collington are ready with what needs to be done: a new vision for the civil service; invest in internal government capacity and capability creation; embed learning and evaluation into contracts; and mandate transparency and exposure of conflicting interest.

As the title of this book implies, consulting is, at least in part, a confidence trick. A consultant's job is to convince anxious customers that they have the answers, whether or not that's true.

powerful ... The authors provide countless convincing examples of the danger of public overreliance on the consulting industry ... The Big Con puts forward a forceful argument about an issue about which most ordinary people know little but - given the enormous influence of the consulting industry - have a right to understand and scrutinise. An effective, important and highly readable book.

The Big Con of the book's title is not a crime; it's a confidence trick. Consultancies and outsourcers, Mazzucato argues, know less than they claim, cost more than they seem to, and - over the long term - prevent the public sector developing in-house capabilities

We are effectively devolving decision-making to people who are doubly unelected in many cases and whose own interests may diverge fairly dramatically from the collective interest or the interest that government is supposed to be pursuing.

Any government looking to rediscover its "vision, purpose and narrative" already knows who to call

The consultants may have different names ...and might perform different economic functions...but the effect they have on their client organisations is the same: to entrench short-term thinking, to deplete them of knowledge and skills, and, ultimately, to enfeeble them.

The power of government is crucial for driving the economy forward. But only if it retains capacity. Mazzucato and Collington have written a brilliant book that exposes the dangerous consequences of outsourcing state capacity to the consulting industry-and how to build it back. A fascinating look at the biggest players in the game and why this matters for all of us.

Stephanie Kelton, author of THE DEFICIT MYTH

A powerful indictment of a dubious industry. This book should be read around the globe, and kickstart a debate that's long overdue: Do we really need all those consultants?

Rutger Bregman, author of UTOPIA FOR REALISTS and HUMANKIND

The Big Con documents, in precise detail and with panoramic vision, all the ways that the consulting industry has insinuated itself into the systems that govern and control our lives. Private companies, public charities and trusts, states, and even the international order have all handed mission-critical functions over to management consultants. Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington document the harms that result, as consultants exploit the public while stripping their clients of expertise and even the capacity to learn. This bill of particulars serves a profound master purpose: to demonstrate that we cannot outsource governance over our lives and still hope to remain prosperous, democratic, and free.

Daniel Markovits, author of THE MERITOCRACY TRAP

A management consultant,' the quip runs, 'is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time-and then keeps the watch.' This is the very least of the confidence tricks perpetrated by the global consulting industry it turns out. Another common saying is that 'nobody ever got fired for hiring McKinsey.' With the publication of The Big Con, they just might.

Brett Christophers, author of RENTIER CAPITALISM

Doggedly researched and elegantly written, this is a fascinating entry point into a critical yet underreported issue

How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies

There is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and hollowed-out, risk-averse governments and shareholder value-maximizing firms. Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington show that our economies' reliance on companies such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY stunts innovation, obfuscates corporate and political accountability and impedes our collective mission of halting climate breakdown. The 'Big Con' is possible in today's economies because of the unique power that consultancies wield through extensive contracts and networks - as advisors, legitimators and outsourcers - and the illusion that they are objective sources of expertise and capacity. The Big Con weakens our businesses, infantilizes our governments and warps our economies. 
 
Mazzucato and Collington expertly debunk the myth that consultancies always add value to the economy. With a wealth of original research, they argue brilliantly for investment and collective intelligence within all organizations and communities, and for a new system in which public and private sectors work innovatively for the common good. We must recalibrate the role of consultants and rebuild economies and governments that are fit for purpose.

Mariana Mazzucato

Praise for The Big Con

a forceful demolition job on the industry

timely ... the analysis is startling

Collington and Mazzucato have provided a meticulously researched anatomy of an industry not widely understood by those outside it. They have explained complex ideas and processes in clear terms, and brought them ...

a forceful demolition job on the industry

timely ... the analysis is startling

Collington and Mazzucato have provided a meticulously researched anatomy of an industry not widely understood by those outside it. They have explained complex ideas and processes in clear terms, and brought them ...

a forceful demolition job on the industry

timely ... the analysis is startling

Collington and Mazzucato have provided a meticulously researched anatomy of an industry not widely understood by those outside it. They have explained complex ideas and processes in clear terms, and brought them ...

Books by Mariana Mazzucato

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