Mission Economy by Mariana Mazzucato
Two sentence summary
Mariana Mazzucato explores what could be achieved and how the role and interactions of government and business might change if governments set ambitious direction through large, purpose-based missions. She draws many lessons from the USA putting a man on the moon in the 1960s - how that was achieved, and the wider co-benefits.
Three things I took from the book
1. THE IMPORTANCE OF DIRECTION
If we focus our activities on missions (like the USA did in the 1960s with getting a man on the moon) then “growth has not only a rate but also a direction”. In businesses we talk about the importance of purpose and vision so that everyone’s pointing in the same direction.
What if we do this at a national or international level? So that there is a bigger, more meaningful reason for value creation beyond just growth for growth’s sake or making money.
2. WE’RE NOT FINANCING PRODUCTIVE THINGS
“The financial sector has largely been financing itself. Most finance goes back into finance, insurance and real estate rather than into productive uses”
This really got me thinking.
A lot of the money we’re investing (90% in the UK) isn’t in productive uses - it’s in intangible conceptual things. Which can result in speculative bubbles that burst.
3. PRE-DISTRIBUTION VS RE-DISTRIBUTION
At the moment, we largely have a model of redistribution, where value is created / money made and then it is redistributed through taxes or benefits. What if we moved to a model of predistribution where we design fairness and justice from the start. This feels like the conversations we have about sustainability - it’s much more effective to design it in from the start rather than retrofit it later.
Three questions it prompted
1. HOW WOULD IT FEEL TO BE MISSION-ORIENTED?
How different would it feel to live and work in a country where the government was focused on missions (“what do we really want to do? And how do we create the resources requred to realze the mission?”) versus “how much money do we have and what can we afford?”.
It feels like a shift from scarcity mindset to abundance mindset.
2. WHAT MIGHT THE RIPPLE EFFECTS BE?
There were a huge number of unanticipated benefits that came out of the work to put man on the moon (listed in the book). If we were to collaborate on large social and environmental missions, what might be the unanticipated benefits beyond that one mission? For example, through technologies or ways of working that were created.
I think this is very exciting! The benefits actually delivered could far outweigh the ones anticipated at the outset. The dangers of a traditional cost-benefit analysis.
3. HOW WOULD WE ALL BE INVOLVED IN DEFINING THE MISSIONS?
The space mission in the 1960s was driven top-down. Whereas today’s missions will require more engagement in actually creating the vision for the mission - the example given is defining “what a ‘green city’ might look like”.
How would that sort of citizen engagement work? Could it be through citizen assemblies? At what level would it be - local, regional, national, continental, international?