Conference to challenge thinking about the role of the state in innovation
A University of Sussex economist is organising a major international conference in London next week that will challenge conventional thinking about the role of the state in driving innovation.
The Secretary of State for Business Innovation & Skills, the Rt Hon Dr Vince Cable MP, will make a keynote address at the House of Commons on the opening day of the conference, organised by Professor Mariana Mazzucato of SPRU – Science Policy Research Unit.
In her 2013 book The Entrepreneurial State, Professor Mazzucato shows how long-term state investment has been critical to fostering innovations from the iPhone to new pharmaceutical drugs. She argues that governments need to adopt an active, mission-oriented approach to funding the innovations of the future, to ensure that economic growth is both ‘smart’ and more ‘inclusive’.
Dr Cable said: “Innovation is a critical engine of the real economy.
“To persuade the public of the need for long‐term investment in innovation, we must - as Professor Mazzucato has done – demonstrate the central role played by the state in driving technological progress and putting the economy on a more sustainable footing.”
Professor Mazzucato said: “We have focused on fixing finance, while leaving the ‘real’ economy as sick as before. This is setting up the next bubble.
“Financial reform and innovation policy must go hand in hand because innovation requires more long‐term committed finance, and a de‐financialized private sector.
“We should not just talk about ‘eco-systems’ of innovation, but specify concrete ways to make those eco‐systems more symbiotic and less parasitic.”
Entitled ‘Mission‐oriented Finance for Innovation’, the conference (22-24 July) brings together politicians, policy-makers, business and banking leaders across seven countries to think about what the state can do in key areas to nurture innovation-led growth that is both smart and inclusive.
The Director of SPRU, Professor Johan Schot, will be in conversation with Paul Mason from ‘Channel 4 News’ about finance, value and innovation over the long term, and SPRU’s Professor Andy Stirling, Caetano Penna and Honorary Professor Carlota Perez will be involved in panel debates on a range of issues - from finance for smart and inclusive growth to the state as a shaper and creator of markets.
You can join in the conversation on Twitter using #MOFI2014 and follow @SPRU and @MazzucatoM for live tweets from the event.
Day two of the conference will be streamed live online.
The conference is sponsored by SPRU, the Brazilian Ministry for Science and Technology and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and is part of an Institute for New Economic Thinking research project, ‘Financing Innovation: An Application of a Keynes‐Schumpeter‐Minsky Synthesis’, led by Professor Mazzucato and Professor L. Randall Wray from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.