Mission Economy summary

Business & Startup 2020s Contemporary Business & Startups Philosophy & Stoicism Economics

ISBN: 9780063046269

Book Summary & Synopsis

What's it about?

Mission Economy argues that society needs ambitious shared missions to confront challenges such as climate change, inequality, public health, and environmental destruction. Inspired by the Apollo program, Mariana Mazzucato shows how governments can shape markets, take risks, build capabilities, and mobilize public and private resources around clear goals.

Who is it for?

Readers interested in economic policy, government innovation, public investment, and the future of capitalism.
Anyone who wants to understand how collective purpose, business participation, and democratic involvement can help address large social and environmental challenges.

Meet the author

Mariana Mazzucato argues for mission oriented thinking in which governments, businesses, and citizens organize their capabilities around ambitious goals and judge economic activity partly by the public value it creates.

From the Introduction & First Chapter

Introduction

Mission Economy by Mariana Mazzucato. We need a collective sense of purpose to solve today's global challenges. In 1969, something extraordinary happened. Human beings walked on the moon.

It took years of work, hundreds of thousands of people, and an unwavering focus on one goal. In a word, it took a mission. Today, the world needs that same sense of purpose. The COVID-19 crisis exposed weaknesses that had been building in our political economy for decades.

Governments suddenly spent whatever it took to protect healthcare systems, businesses, and workers. But this raised a deeper question. What kind of economy were they trying to preserve? Even before the pandemic, inequality was widening, climate change was accelerating, and public institutions were being weakened.

Solving these problems requires more than repairing the old system. It requires a new way of thinking about government, business, innovation, and economic value. Mariana Mazzucato calls this mission-oriented thinking. The inspiration comes from one of history's most ambitious public projects, the Apollo program.

In 1962, President Kennedy committed the United States to putting a man on the moon. The goal was clear, measurable, and extraordinarily difficult. It took seven years and cost $28 billion. In 2020 terms, that was roughly $283 billion.

More than 400,000 people contributed to the effort. The government did not begin by asking how cheaply the mission could be accomplished. It began with the goal itself. Then it mobilized the resources needed to achieve it.

The benefits extended far beyond the moon landing. The spacecraft's computers helped stimulate advances in modern software. Materials developed to protect astronauts later found uses in home insulation. NASA's management methods influenced major industrial projects such as the Boeing 747.

One ambitious mission generated countless innovations and economic spillovers. Modern governments rarely think this way. Projects are often constrained by budgets before their ambitions are even defined. Mazzucato argues that we should reverse that logic, start with the mission, then organize public and private resources around it.

Doing so requires rethinking some deeply rooted assumptions about capitalism and the role of government. But that may be essential for building a more resilient and equitable future.

rethinking who creates economic value

Rethinking Who Creates Economic Value. Modern economies often assume that markets create value while governments merely regulate or redistribute it. Mazzucato challenges that assumption. The financial sector provides a revealing example.

In the United Kingdom, around 90% of bank lending supports real estate and financial assets. Much of finance therefore finances existing assets rather than new productive activity. The same logic has spread into ordinary businesses. Companies increasingly prioritize shareholder value over investment, workers' innovation, and long-term productive capacity.

This process of financialization contributes to inequality. It can also obstruct the investment needed to confront climate change. Yet conventional economic thinking often assigns government only a limited role. Government is expected to intervene when markets fail.

It might fund vaccinations, regulate pollution, or correct other specific problems. Bold experimentation and risk-taking are supposedly jobs for private enterprise. Reality is more complicated. Governments frequently take major risks that make private innovation possible.

In 2009, the US government supported two ambitious clean technology companies. Solyndra received a loan of $535 million. Tesla received a loan of $465 million. Solyndra later went bankrupt.

Tesla became enormously successful. The Solyndra failure became evidence, for critics, that governments should not pick winners. The government's contribution to Tesla's early development received far less attention. This reveals an important imbalance.

Governments are blamed when investments fail, but rarely rewarded when investments succeed. At the same time, public institutions are increasingly expected to behave like private companies. They focus heavily on cutting costs and balancing budgets. Many functions are outsourced because private contractors are assumed to be more efficient.

But outsourcing can weaken government expertise and sometimes cost more than maintaining internal capabilities. The result is a vicious cycle. Government loses capacity. Its weakened performance is then used as evidence that government cannot perform effectively.

Mazzucato argues that this cycle must be broken. Public institutions can innovate, experiment, and take risks. History already provides powerful evidence. The Apollo program shows what government can accomplish when it develops the capacity and confidence to pursue ambitious goals.