A mission-oriented approach to building the entrepreneurial state

Many western countries are pursuing innovation-led ‘smart’ growth so to rebalance away from consumer debt driven growth and ‘financialization’. This paper argues that innovation-led growth is a major battle that requires public policy to fundamentally change from one that views the goal of government as simply fixing markets to one that views it in terms of actively creating and shaping markets. Indeed, those ‘mission-oriented’ investments that led to putting a man on the moon (with the resulting technological spill-overs) and are today catalysing investments to tackle climate change world-wide required dynamic public agencies to be active in shaping and creating new market landscapes. The paper considers four key questions which arise from such a ‘market creating’ framework: decision-making on the direction of change; the nature of (public and private) organisations that can welcome the underlying uncertainty and discovery process; the evaluation of mission-oriented and market creation policies; and the need to share both the risks and rewards underlying the innovation process—so that ‘smart’ innovation-led growth can also become ‘inclusive’ growth. The paper is meant to serve as a ‘think piece’ for Innovate UK so that it can think more broadly and strategically about its role at the centre of the economic growth process.