Name: THE ENTREPRENEURIAL STATE
ISBN: 9780857282521

THE ENTREPRENEURIAL STATE

The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths stirred up much-needed debate about the role of the state in fostering long-run innovation led economic growth. 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? The book comprehensively debunks the myth of a lumbering, bureaucratic state versus a dynamic, innovative private sector. In a series of case studies—from IT, biotech, nanotech to today’s emerging green tech—Professor Mazzucato shows that the opposite is true: the private sector only finds the courage to invest after an entrepreneurial state has made the high-risk investments. In an intensely researched chapter, she reveals that every technology that makes the iPhone so ‘smart’ was government funded: the Internet, GPS, its touch-screen display and the voice-activated Siri. Mazzucato also controversially argues that 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.

What Hacker News says

culiMay 2026

I mean the AI companies probably just want to make American model pricing look ridiculous in comparison (it's working imo). I think the government probably wants actually-useful AI that could be put into chips and actually revolutionize factory work or mining or whatever. Large, SOTA models are not gonna change factory work but extremely efficient and optimized models may

Every industry-wide scale technological revolution has happened because government funded a technology and then opened it up to the masses. Just look at your iPhone: GPS, the internet, AI voice assistants, touchscreens, microprocessors, lithium-ion batteries, etc all came from gov't research (I'm counting Bell Labs' gov't mandated monopoly + research funding as gov't)

Economist Mariana Mazzucato wrote a great book about this called The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths

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culiJan 2026

All economically transformative technologies have done similar. If it's privatized, it's not gonna be transformative across the industry. The GPS, the internet, touchscreens, AI voice assistants, microchips, LCDs, etc were all publicly funded (or made by Bell Labs which had a state-mandated monopoly that forced them to open up their patents).

The economist Mariana Mazzucato wrote a great book about this called The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths

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canduJul 2025

Government investment in science is...the only way basic science happens, really. I'd recommend reading The Entrepreneurial State [1] here: in essence, basic science pays off too slowly to interest even the most deeply-pocketed capital interests, but it pays off, so wise societies invest in it; Silicon Valley owes its existence to massive formative public investments in underlying technologies.

Not to mention that smart people generally prefer to live in places that value and protect science, so it's _also_ an indirect form of geopolitical talent recruitment. (See brain drain + brain gain impacts of science policy, for instance. There's a strong argument to be made that US mid-20th-century dominance in science and engineering was largely driven by a lot of very smart people fleeing Nazi Germany.)

Basic science isn't so much a lottery ticket as a bond with unknown maturity measured in decades, a _very_ high rate of return, a high minimum investment, and dividend-like payouts created by adding skilled scientists, engineers, etc. to your tax base.

[1] https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state...

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thundergolferApr 2024

I found Mazzucato's Entrepreneurial State argument highly valuable in this day and age. I'll definitely check out this pod.

Big4 consultancies are decently desirable graduate hirers in my country, despite paying low, demanding long hours, and providing low value training. That's not to mention the malpractice scandals.

The fact that a graduate consultant gig is more respected than teaching roles and government positions shows the rot that's set in over the past 40 years.

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pkdNov 2023

"happened anyway" is always logic I see applied to government made advancements and not to private ones.

A good read on the topic is "The Entrepreneurial State" by M. Mazzucato.

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Barrin92Jul 2023

He addresses it in IIRC chapter 7 & 8 of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. But another more recent book I'd recommend that takes this kind of framework is The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato.

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