Explains the actual good in innovation that government is responsible for and the way in which the private sector takes up those goods and runs with them. A good symbiotic relationship that is spoiled when people refuse to acknowledge the first order good of basic r&d that government initiatives provide, blame them unreasonably for failures (while not putting same unreasonable view on private failures) and then using all that ignorance to pretend they (private sector companies) are wholly responsible for risks and rewards, emphasis on rewards. This ultimately justifies working towards favorable tax codes in order to avoid paying back the original government risk and basically being good citizens working to build good governmental bodies. Excellent book.

The Entrepreneurial State discusses the importance of government funding to support private sector innovation. The author provides detailed examples of how public funding helped with the development of the Apple iPhone, Tesla, drug development in the pharma industry, and the birth of nanotechnology. Despite investing in the success of these products, the government gets too little return on its investment because of the ability of those firms to evade taxes.

Although the book addresses a very important topic, it suffers from several weaknesses. First of all, it is not very readable and the number of repetitions quickly becomes annoying. Second, because it is now ten years old, the examples provided feel very dated. Despite that, it provides convincing evidence for its thesis. ( )

Mythe du garage
Autre livre, non traduit : The Big Con (2023)
Voir https://www.alternatives-economiques.fr/grand-pouvoir-consultants-trois-autres-c... ( )

Makes the point in great detail and length that many of the most revolutionary technical and technological advances have been achieved with the active support and initiative of governments, and not by private entrepreneurs alone. Government funding and government research agencies are better enabled to take up risky ventures that require high up-front investment with no guarantees of success. Examples discussed and described in detail include the Internet, personal computers and user interfaces, communication devices and technologies, pharmaceuticals and medicines, green energy and sustainable development, and so on.The author suggests mechanisms to reward public investment by returns from the private sector, so that the cycle of innovation can be sustained. The book makes its case by specific information and dense detail about the chosen sectors, rather than broad generalizations or philosophical speculation. This does make for somewhat heavy reading, and perhaps could have been presented in a somewhat lighter manner. ( )

State financing, not private investment, lays the groundwork for much valuable innovation, and pretending that it doesn’t has led to the fetishization of private business, the stripping of government capacity, and the collapse of taxation/regulation of the “innovators” who get credit for taking tech the last 10% of the way to widescale implementation. That 10% is important, Mazzucato argues, but it can’t be the only thing we focus on. And that means that government is going to have to take risks, and will sometimes invest in losers. Solyndra goes bankrupt, but Apple is worth hundreds of billions because of investments largely by the US military and related entities in various internet-relevant technologies, and we’re at risk of missing out on green tech if we don’t start investing government resources in basic research and in moving technologies towards commercialization. ( )