Winner of the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, where she founded and directs the “Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose ».

Her work can be linked to the institutionalist and Keynesian currents of economic theory. It deconstructs the myth that a private sector would innovate totally autonomously, in the absence of action by any public or private institution. On the contrary, it demonstrates the indispensable role of the state in the major technological advances of modern and contemporary times.

In 2011, she published the first version of her book “The Innovative State” for the think tank “Demos”, showing that the origins of the most innovative companies such as Tesla, Google and Apple were rooted in public research programmes. In her book “The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking public vs. private sector myths”, Mariana Mazzucato presents a number of products that have benefited from significant risk-taking by the state, where markets would have adopted a more cautious attitude. The success of the iPhone, for example, is due not only to the genius of Steve Jobs and Apple, but also to the colossal investments made by the US government to develop the Internet structures and satellite network needed for GPS.

Mariana Mazzucato sees a double injustice. The first is to let people believe that private partners are the only ones capable of driving innovation, whereas the State is decisive in carrying out large-scale projects over the long term. The second is to let private players reap the benefits of this belief, to the detriment of the State, which does not see its investments rewarded at their fair value.

This economist with a voluntarist approach advises political decision-makers the world over on sustainable, inclusive growth based on innovation.