Prof Mariana Mazzucato

Biography

In November 2011 I joined the University of Sussex as RM Phillips Professor in Science and Technology Policy, after 10 years at the Open University where I was most recently Professor in the Economics of Innovation.  

I received my BA in History and International Relations at Tufts University and my PhD in Economics from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York (USA).  After my PhD I joined the University of Denver as Assistant Professor of Economics, and then undertook a Marie Curie Post-Doctoral fellowship at the London Business School. From 2006-2008 I was Visiting Professor at the Bocconi University in Italy.

My work focuses on the relationship between financial markets, innovation, and economic growth, and is currently funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET); the Ford Foundation and the European Commission. I currently advise the EC on innovation led growth through two expert groups, and am member of related task forces in the UK, such as the UCL Green Economy Policy Commission.

My work on The Entrepreneurial State (DEMOS, 2011) has had significant policy impact across Europe, and my forthcoming book (Anthem, 2013), with the same title (double the size and scope), develops this work further, focusing on the need to develop new frameworks to understand the role of the state in economic growth—and how to enable rewards from innovation to be just as ‘social’ as the risks taken.My research and media profile can be found on www.marianamazzucato.com.

C.V. for Mariana Mazzucato

The Entrepreneurial State: debunking private vs. public myths

Responses to Mariana's talk in the session 'Money Talks' at TED Global 2013

'Debunking the narrative of Silicon Valley's innovation might' Bruce Upbin writing for FORBES

'Eye-opener for the elite on inequity' Chrystia Freeland writing for The New York Times

'Who funds Silicon Valley? Not VC's' - Margaret Heffernan, writing for Inc.

'Government - Investor, risk-taker, innovator: Mariana Mazzucato at TEDGlobal 2013' - David Webber writing for TED blog.

'Il TED dietro le quinte/2| Chi finanzia la vera innovazione? Lo Stato' - Oriana Persico e Salvatore Iaconesi writing for Che Futuro! Lunario dell'innovazione

'TEDGlobal 2013: Trois idées pour reprendre la main sur l'économie' Le Monde blog

Five Minutes with Mariana Mazzucato - LSE Blog

'We have socialised the risk of innovation but privitised the rewards'

Mariana responding to John Kay's lecture on 'The Future of Capitalism' - Political Quarterly's Annual Lecture.

Speaker(s): Professor John Kay, Professor Mariana Mazzucato
Chair: Professor Julian Le Grand

Official LSE site

Recorded on 4 June 2013 in New Theatre, East Building.

  New Book Out 10th June 2013

    The Entrepreneurial State:

    Debunking public vs. private sector myths

    Official lanch site | Sample chapter | Table of contents

This is a book whose time has come.  Mariana Mazzucato documents how the state played a crucial role behind some of the landmark innovations of our time.  For many, the “entrepreneurial state” is a contradiction in terms. For Mazzucato, it is both a reality and a requirement for future prosperity.

Dani Rodrik, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

The principal entrepreneurial drive that has given us many of today’s most important technologies has come from the state. Most thinking and arguing regarding how to energize  our sluggish economies is blind to this fact. Mariana Mazzucato’s book aims to get us to understand better the sources of entrepreneurship, and to reflect more positively on the role aggressive technology policies can play in getting our economies moving again.

Richard Nelson, Columbia University

The Entrepreneurial State delivers a well-researched and elegantly (even entertainingly) written knock-out to the belief across most of the political spectrum and the economics profession that (with some qualifications) ‘the market knows best’.  As many governments wonder how to boost the productivity and innovativeness of their industrial sectors, the book provides guidelines – based on successful and unsuccessful cases – on how to do industrial policy well. Above all, it shows why the common presumption that the state  ‘crowds out’ the private sector – as though the private sector is a lion caged by a smothering state – is contradicted by what governments of economies from the United States to Brazil and China  actually do to ‘crowd in’ innovations in the private sector. 

Robert Wade, London School of Economics 

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