Mission Economy - Tak's Reading Room

Paperback, 256 pages

English language

Published May 23, 2021 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-304623-8

(1 review)

Capitalism is in crisis. The rich have gotten richer--the 1 percent, those with more than $1 million, own 44 percent of the world's wealth--while climate change is transforming--and in some cases wiping out--life on the planet. We are plagued by crises threatening our lives, and this situation is unsustainable. But how do we fix these problems decades in the making?

Mission Economy looks at the grand challenges facing us in a radically new way. Global warming, pollution, dementia, obesity, gun violence, mobility--these environmental, health, and social dilemmas are huge, complex, and have no simple solutions. Mariana Mazzucato argues we need to think bigger and mobilize our resources in a way that is as bold as inspirational as the moon landing--this time to the most 'wicked' social problems of our time.. We can only begin to find answers if we fundamentally restructure capitalism to make it inclusive, sustainable, and driven by …

Capitalism is in crisis. The rich have gotten richer--the 1 percent, those with more than $1 million, own 44 percent of the world's wealth--while climate change is transforming--and in some cases wiping out--life on the planet. We are plagued by crises threatening our lives, and this situation is unsustainable. But how do we fix these problems decades in the making?

Mission Economy looks at the grand challenges facing us in a radically new way. Global warming, pollution, dementia, obesity, gun violence, mobility--these environmental, health, and social dilemmas are huge, complex, and have no simple solutions. Mariana Mazzucato argues we need to think bigger and mobilize our resources in a way that is as bold as inspirational as the moon landing--this time to the most 'wicked' social problems of our time.. We can only begin to find answers if we fundamentally restructure capitalism to make it inclusive, sustainable, and driven by innovation that tackles concrete problems from the digital divide, to health pandemics, to our polluted cities. That means changing government tools and culture, creating new markers of corporate governance, and ensuring that corporations, society, and the government coalesce to share a common goal.

We did it to go to the moon. We can do it again to fix our problems and improve the lives of every one of us. We simply can no longer afford not to.

4 editions

luxon@bookwyrm.social reviewed Mission Economy by Mariana Mazzucato

a pitch and not much more

3 stars

This book is easy to read and has a compelling central idea. It talks about what made the moon race work so well and indicates how to replicate the success. However, I worry that through the very writing of this book, the very mission-ness of the idea gets lost. I am sure that McKinsey already has a long presentation deck on what makes a mission a mission and how to properly set up a mission and execute it (and spend billions in the process). Using the moon race as an example is easy because it obviously succeeded and happened a long time ago, but it's also a cop-out to not have to say why similar efforts (many of them started with the advice of Mazzucato herself) are failing. The contemporary examples she cites are not compelling; she points towards the "Energiewende" (energy turn) in Germany as a positive example, a …

This book is easy to read and has a compelling central idea. It talks about what made the moon race work so well and indicates how to replicate the success. However, I worry that through the very writing of this book, the very mission-ness of the idea gets lost. I am sure that McKinsey already has a long presentation deck on what makes a mission a mission and how to properly set up a mission and execute it (and spend billions in the process). Using the moon race as an example is easy because it obviously succeeded and happened a long time ago, but it's also a cop-out to not have to say why similar efforts (many of them started with the advice of Mazzucato herself) are failing. The contemporary examples she cites are not compelling; she points towards the "Energiewende" (energy turn) in Germany as a positive example, a term describing the change from fossil fuels to renewables. However, while the term itself is well known, it is no mission. To the extent that it at some point was a mission, it has failed: coal plants continue to run, and Germany is building fewer renewable energy farms than it used to.

Similarly, Mazzucato has worked on the "UK Industrial Strategy" [1]. What has happened to it? Has it failed? Is it succeeding? Or do we only call things "mission" if they end up working – if so, why bother defining the term as a goal at all?

All in all, the concept of a mission economy is compelling, but all the hard parts seem to be in execution and navigating a political climate in which you cannot rely on a cold war to get everyone's support for your mission. Those parts do not get addressed by the book.

[1] www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-mission-oriented-approach-to-building-the-entrepreneurial-state