Why the World's "Scariest Economist" Believes We're at a Tipping Point

30 Jun 2026 · 1 h 3 min · 22 chapters

Ask about this episode

Ask anything about it. ChatGPT or Claude reads this page and answers with the times it was said.

Connect VO and ask about every podcast you hear, including the moments you saved. Add to ChatGPT · Add to Claude

In short

The episode argues that COVID is a “policy sandbox” to prove whether stakeholder capitalism can be rebuilt into a more equitable, sustainable economy. It focuses on redesigning public-private partnerships, especially how vaccines, recovery funds, health systems, and innovation are governed (not just funded).

Guest

Professor Mariana Mazzucato, University College London (economics and innovation). She’s the author of The Entrepreneur’s State and The Value of Everything and is launching Mission Economy (UK Jan, US March).

Key claims

  1. It’s not enough to “race” to solutions like vaccines; governments must govern for public interest (IP, accessibility, rollout).
  2. Recovery spending should be conditional on investment in climate, digitalization, and stronger health systems—not austerity.
  3. The public sector should be a “value co-creator” and market shaper, not merely a fixer of market failures.
  4. Patent and funding rules often privatize upstream research and enable high prices despite public investment.

Notable examples

  • Next Gen EU Recovery Fund (~€1T) tied to climate and digitalization; separate funding for health systems.
  • NIH drug innovation (~$40B/year) with patent rules leading to high prices and overly broad/early privatization.
  • DARPA/ARPA-E/NIH-style problem-solving investment (Internet, GPS).
  • Bell Labs: AT&T monopoly condition required reinvestment into innovation beyond telecom.
  • Sweden’s “fossil-free welfare state” mission and sustainable school meals as innovation funnels.
  • Germany’s KfW steel-sector support conditional on lower material content via reuse/recycling.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Discussion on Vaccines and Business Implications

0:04 to 0:27

Explore the implications of vaccine distribution and its impact on businesses.

“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”

Discussion on Vaccines and Business Implications

2:07 to 4:14

Explore the implications of vaccine distribution and its impact on businesses.

“Shaped by technology and human ingenuity.”

Remaking the Economy Post-COVID

4:19 to 9:29

Professor Mazzucato discusses how to reshape the economy after the pandemic.

“Yeah, we'll force you to go see a Red Sox game.”

Investment and Public Sector Capacity

9:31 to 14:00

The importance of investing in public sector capacity for effective governance.

“So in some ways, it feels like maybe last time around, you know, you talk about there's a second bite of the apple.”

The Role of Government in Innovation

14:00 to 14:48

Explore how government investments fuel entrepreneurial innovation.

“co-create value, and not always be in the back foot, kind of too little, too late, fixing what economists call market failures.”

The Role of Government in Innovation

14:51 to 15:46

Explore how government investments fuel entrepreneurial innovation.

“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”

Public-Private Partnerships and Innovation

15:46 to 19:44

Discuss the challenges and opportunities in public-private collaborations.

“But how much of that might be a disincentive then for, you know, so many entrepreneurs to put, to really put the hard work in necessary to come up with the innovations that drive us forward?”

Public-Private Partnerships and Innovation

19:47 to 20:39

Discuss the challenges and opportunities in public-private collaborations.

“You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new.”

Shaping Public Value Through Governance

20:39 to 24:41

Understand the importance of governance structures in value creation.

“So this kind of issue around conditionality.”

The Evolution of Corporate Responsibilities

26:08 to 28:00

Examine how corporate responsibilities have shifted over the years.

“So not just private profit haven't been as eloquent as they have been, for example, in the BBC.”
Show all 22 chapters

Corporate Purpose and Practicality

28:00 to 31:47

Exploring the need for corporate purpose to be integrated into the business model and how practical implementations can be achieved.

“But anyway, you know, so so it's easy to say that the companies are, you know, are just profit motivated, that they're talking the talk, but not walking the walk.”

Government's Role in Public Purpose

31:47 to 36:36

Discussing the importance of government involvement in shaping a purpose-driven economy and the need for innovative policies.

“and the Green Deal, bringing it back to the agenda, but at the center of the recovery funds.”

Education and Public Sector Innovation

36:36 to 42:07

Analyzing the role of education in supporting public sector innovation and the call for reform in higher education.

“So before we go to audience questions, I do have a question for you about Europe.”

The Importance of Public Education

42:07 to 44:11

Explore the critical role of public education and research in addressing societal challenges.

“And can I say something super provocative?”

UN's Role in Sustainable Development Goals

44:11 to 46:26

Understand how the UN and governments can facilitate public-private partnerships for sustainability.

“And I know you were recently announced as a chair of the Council for the World Health Organization.”

The Value of Work and Happiness

46:54 to 48:20

Discussion on the relationship between work, happiness, and economic measurements.

“So thank you all for pinning in and have a safe and pleasant holiday.”

Redefining Wealth and Value Creation

48:20 to 53:06

Insights into how wealth is created and distributed in society.

“But, you know, that discussion often then gets into a discussion of happiness and a discussion of universal basic income, maybe, you know, and ultimately a discussion about why do we live?”

Emergency Response to Climate Change

53:06 to 56:01

Discussion on the urgency of addressing climate change and sustainability goals.

“You know, so it was all about building barriers and thinking about who's screwing who.”

The Urgency of Climate Action

56:01 to 57:20

Discussing the urgency of climate change and the need for proactive measures.

“Greta says, Greta Thornburg, 16 now, what is she?”

Economics and Holiday Movies

57:21 to 58:56

Exploring favorite holiday movies and their economic implications.

“It's a little bit off topic from some of the great stuff you were just discussing, but I think it ties in and it's a little seasonal.”

The Role of Movements in Change

58:57 to 59:55

Highlighting historical movements that brought about social change and their significance.

“You know, often people died for things that we all are benefiting from.”

The Complexity of Systemic Change

59:56 to 1:00:58

Discussing the complexities and gradual nature of systemic change in society.

“I mean, we've published some great pieces in the last few years, first of all, on, you know, breaking down the whole concept of shareholder primacy, that it is, you know, flawed logic and not even really a matter of law.”
Hear the part that matters, and keep it.Open this episode in VO. Double tap your headphones to save a moment as you listen.
Get VO free

Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:01This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Hey Chicago, class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear?

0:35Step into a local croc store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest croc store today.

1:07Welcome to HBR Now. I'm Joshua Mokta, I'm the Chief Product Innovation Officer for Harvard Business Publishing, and I am joined by my co-hosts, my two co-hosts, Octavia Gordema, who's the career coach and founder of the 2010 agency, and the one and only Adi Ignatius. Hello. Hi. How are you guys? Good? Everyone good? All right. We're going to be joined today by our special guest, who's Professor Mariana Mazzucato, a professor at University College London, where she focuses on economics and innovation. Now, don't turn away just because you heard we have an economist on. She's incredibly fascinating.

1:48Her ideas are really compelling, and she has the ear of world leaders. It's going to be a very interesting conversation about how it is we remake our economy in a post-COVID world. Right. But before we get to that, I think we need a word from our sponsors.

2:07Change is all around us. Shaped by technology and human ingenuity. We can make it work for you and your business.

2:20And we're back. We're back. How are you guys? Still fine. Still fine. Big news this week, right? Vaccine rolling out all over the United States. The stories are pretty unbelievable, hearing especially frontline, especially the doctors and nurses who have been going through a grueling time trying to take care of everyone and seeing these stories. I mean, in some ways it's heartbreaking, but it also is uplifting at the same time, right as we move into holiday time. So how are you both feeling about where we are right now? I'm feeling great about, exactly as you said, Josh, just seeing the images like my paper and like health workers receiving those first doses here in the United States and around the world just makes me feel good for everything we've been through.

3:11I know. It's really kind of hard to believe. Adi, what are you thinking? It's such a mixed picture. I mean, we're up to 300 ,000 dead. You know, the vaccine is thrilling. Those first images of doctors, you know, getting the in the U.S., getting the vaccines is great. It gets interesting now, though, because now it's, you know, if the experts say we need to get 75 percent of the population, you know, vaccinated. First of all, there are limits to that. Some of them are distribution. Some of them are an unwillingness to take it. But, you know, so so the business question that probably a lot of our viewers are thinking about, you know, can companies should companies require their employees to be vaccinated?

3:52Can they do it? It looks like legally they can. Should they do it? Well, you know, that's very complicated. You know, I'm a sports fan. I'd love to go watch Red Sox games again in the spring. You know, do I want to sit in a in a crowd when I don't know if other people have been vaccinated? already people like Ticketmaster are you know creating apps that show whether you've had the vaccine so it's just getting really interesting and interesting in the kind of business angle that you know this is uncharted territory for us. Yeah no it's a I mean it's you're definitely right about that it is hard though maybe it's just me and the holiday season I mean I just feel like when you say even the Red Sox game I'm like yes maybe next year and Octavia you're going to come visit with us.

4:33Yes I would love that. Yeah, we'll force you to go see a Red Sox game. But maybe we'll all be vaccinated for it. You don't know. But there is a sort of this sense of a gift. And I think that's what our TikTok today is kind of all about, is kind of capturing that. So why don't you roll that, Producer Dave?

5:05storing a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. Hey, Chicago. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local croc store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled.

5:45Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest croc store today.

6:07She's a doctor. She's a happy doctor. All right. That was a little weird. But anyway, good seeing you guys. You're going to come back. I'm going to introduce our guest now. So we are lucky to, as I said, have Professor Mariana Mazzucano on the show today. She has been called electrifying, which is a big deal for an economist to be called that, I think. Her ideas are definitely thought-provoking. She's the author of books such as The Entrepreneur's State and The Value of Everything. And she has a new book coming out, which you see here, Mission Economy, which is coming out next year. And she talks about how we can kind of work together, public and private sector, towards a more sustainable and equitable economy, really, and refashion our economy coming out of this COVID crisis.

6:55So I am excited to introduce Mariana. How are you? I'm fine. How are you? Good, good, good. Nice to see you and welcome. So I just kind of want to jump right in and start and get a sense from you. You know, how is it that coming out of this crisis, you think we can kind of remake our economy so that, you know, really, as I see some of your ideas, public and private coming together to really create a more equitable, more sustainable economy when it comes to technology, healthcare, environment. But how do we go about doing this or start to think about it? So, you know, what's interesting, I think back to when the lockdowns happened globally, which was last March.

7:40And a month before that, some of us, some unlucky ones, We're in Davos in Switzerland. And all the talk there was about stakeholder capitalism and purpose. And what I believe this period is right now that we're living through is the best possible testbed sandbox, if you want to call it that, a policy sandbox, to see whether we've learned anything from the last kind of 10 years. You know, can we actually walk the talk of having a stakeholder approach to actually really building back better, which has to be so much better because what got us both climate change, the financial crisis, the health crisis was structurally a problematic way of doing capitalism.

8:22And you guys were just talking about the vaccine. You know, it's not enough to race towards a vaccine. You need to govern it in such a way that actually serves the public interest. And that's very different from simply kind of emphasizing, you know, a partnership, you know, Pfizer governments, we need to govern whether it's intellectual property rights, the accessibility, the rolling out of that vaccine globally, because otherwise it's not going to work, right? If one part of the world is not immune, it will continue to cause problems. So I just think whether it's building a vaccine or how we structure these recovery funds, which are in the trillions globally, that's really important to get those details right.

9:02And unfortunately, I think if you look at what's actually happening on the ground, we don't necessarily see enough change. So what I'm interested in for 2021 is let's get serious. Let's take different examples. The vaccine is definitely one, but another one would be, you know, in particular countries, again, the recovery of particular sectors, whether it's airlines, the hospitality industry, and look at how we can just do it fundamentally differently to build a symbiotic public-private partnership. But I'm curious, Mariana, because coming out of the financial crisis, the markets, the financial markets actually dropped a lot more than they have now.

9:39So in some ways, it feels like maybe last time around, you know, you talk about there's a second bite of the apple. We have another chance at this. But what's the case for optimism that if we missed it? This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web. like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome.

10:12Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. Hey, Chicago. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new Fave footwear? Step into a local croc store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest croc store today. Last time, and the markets had dropped so much and seemed so vulnerable. Now, you know, financial markets are fairly strong. What's the case for optimism that we do start to think about public and private investment in a different way, the way you suggest?

11:04That's a really interesting question. And I'm sitting in Europe, even though I'm actually sitting in London, which is in the UK, which is trying to get out of Europe. Anyway, let's not go there. But in Europe, what's really interesting right now is that we have a completely different mentality from the one that we had in the financial crisis. You might remember that the recovery funds available after the financial crisis, there was really strong conditions attached to the way that countries, nations, had to promise to reduce basically their spending, their deficits, in order to access those recovery funds.

11:39This was the whole kind of Baroufakis affair in Greece fighting against the austerity, but also in the UK, we ended up on the back of the financial crisis, which was really caused by private debt, not public debt. We kind of missed that point and just ended up with 10 years, almost 10 years of austerity, which is a cut in public expenditure, which got us all sorts of problems, which didn't prepare us for this health crisis because the health systems themselves were made less resilient. Anyway, this time around in Europe, for example, we have a recovery fund that is close to a trillion euros. It's called the Next Gen EU Recovery Fund.

12:18And it's conditional not on cuts but on investment, on investment around two grand challenges, climate change, the climate crisis, we should call it, and digitalization. There's another pot separate to the recovery fund, which is about building stronger health systems across Europe. So that's already super interesting, right? Like you have the whole region saying we're going to really build back better, but that requires investment, long-term investment and public sector capacity. Now, the real question is, do these different member states across Europe have that capacity? And unfortunately, as we've also seen in the UK, there's been a, how can you say, diminishing public sector capacity even to govern the crisis itself.

13:01So we've over-relied, for example, on consulting companies. We have Deloitte doing a lot of the test and trace to the point that a Tory lord recently, Lord Agnew, said we have infantilized government by this over-reliance on consulting companies. So I think this is a huge wake-up call globally to actually invest within government institutions at the city level, the state level, regional, national, et cetera, in order to really govern a crisis of this sort. And what's really interesting, if you look globally, you have countries like Vietnam or regions like Kerala and India, which have actually done quite well.

13:40And that's because it's on the back of a lot of new thinking in terms of their own public administration. And I just think there's something really interesting, actually, for Harvard Business Review to start looking at, which is what does it mean to have kind of strategy, decision sciences, organizational behavior, all these words that are usually just in business schools, brought to governments to give them that dynamic capacity to really co-create markets, co-create value, and not always be in the back foot, kind of too little, too late, fixing what economists call market failures. Now, to get a lot of these innovations, I mean, you sort of rightfully point out that the governments invest a lot in innovation that entrepreneurs then take advantage of.

14:23And I wonder, you know, entrepreneurs put a lot of their risk. It's hard work. And you feel like you need a lot of them out there to get one apple, right? And, you know, to the extent that there's some huge reward, people are motivated. So I think you're basically saying, look, the government needs to take more of, you know, that. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

15:03Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Hey, Chicago. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local croc store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest croc store today. They're partners in creating value. As they say, they're adversaries in claiming it.

15:48And the government needs to claim more. But how much of that might be a disincentive then for, you know, so many entrepreneurs to put, to really put the hard work in necessary to come up with the innovations that drive us forward? Right. So you're not making my heart beat quickly. So, you know, that's the myth, right? I mean, what I, you know, this is all a social science. We can't talk about the truth. But, you know, what I argued in my book, The Entrepreneurial State, was that this thing here, you know, which we all have, or we have something like this, are smart products. They're smart and not stupid.

16:21You know, I talked to my idiotic iPhone. No, we talked to our smart iPhones. Because of all the technology within it that actually makes it smart. So the Internet, GPS, Siri, the touchscreen display, these were all invested in by public organizations, whether it was DARPA with the Internet, the Navy with GPS. But what's even more important is that these were public organizations focused on solving problems. So the Internet came about from the drive to actually get the satellites to communicate. GPS was a result of the Navy wanting to know how to position its ships much more strategically, if you want, in the oceans.

17:01So the real question today is not whether the state's important or not. Of course it is. Just looking at our smart products. What are the real problems today that should be driving that kind of problem solving? One, that's the first question. And these are usually social, not just technological problems, you know, around climate change, which is a wicked problem because it requires political and regulatory change. change as well, not just technological. But also, the second question is, how can we actually foster a much more symbiotic, mutualistic partnership between the public sector and the private sector?

17:34So if you look at Silicon Valley, huge amounts of public sector investment, and yet this is a region which has not necessarily benefited from a reinvestment of the rewards back into what's actually good for the public. Just look at the school system in that part of the world. And so how do we govern the rewards in such a way that we get out of this kind of socialization of risk, privatization of rewards, but how can we do that in a practical way? And I think there's different ways to do that. One is to make sure that we are, in fact, focused on the big problems of our time, so not just gadgets, but we definitely should be confronting, again, the digital divide, climate issues around health, And that should be really driving these public organizations of the DARPA type, ARPA-E, NIH, et cetera.

18:26But also, how can we embed within those funding structures certain types of conditions? You know, the NIH, to me, is the most stark example of where we get it wrong in the United States. So you have$40 billion a year being put into the system by a public institution, the National Institutes of Health, on drug innovation. And then somehow we allow the patents to be abused. They are too wide, so used for strategic reasons, too strong, hard to license, too upstream, so the research itself is privatized. That's not what really patents should be for. It should be much more downstream. And the prices of the drugs, including, by the way, the vaccines that are currently coming out, somehow don't reflect that public contribution.

19:10And if we look back in history in the U.S., it's not really how it used to get done. In fact, in some of the most innovative periods, coming to your question, in U.S. history, where you had companies like AT &T setting up Bell Labs, which was fundamental for the IT revolution globally and in the U.S., Bell Labs actually came from a condition that the U.S. government set for AT &T to retain its monopoly status. They had to reinvest their profits back into the real economy, into innovation and big innovation beyond telecoms. And Bell Labs was the answer. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.

19:47You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Hey, Chicago. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local croc store and step into your new look.

20:23Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest croc store today. So this kind of issue around conditionality. How do you get a public-private collaboration, whether it's in health, whether it's around the digital divide, or let's just call it the ICT, digital AI revolution, or the energy revolution that's really nested within a different form of purpose-driven, stakeholder-driven partnership? That's the question. I mean, the incentives obviously are there. Patents are there.

21:04The question is, how do we govern that patent system? The public funding is there. The question is, how do we govern that public funding to be more, again, symbiotic so that the outcomes are structured in such a way that citizens benefit? Yeah. And I mean, you know, clearly the government in the United States invested a lot in grants and things to get the Internet going. And they may have wanted things that weren't necessarily the right. Now, now we would think more like the conditions as you're talking about it. What are the conditions to actually make a better environment and create value in ways that are more productive for all?

21:37Now, I want to remind people that you're watching HBR Now with Mariana Mazzucato, who's our guest. And I'm going to bring on our co-host now, Mariana, and ask you a few more questions and get questions from the audience as well. Yeah, for the audience, do type your questions in the chat box, and we'll try to get to as many as possible later. But so, Mariana, I want to follow up a little bit on the public-private partnership question. And, you know, the demonization of the public sector, you know, seems to have been an intentional and very successful strategy of the kind of free market fetishists in the U.S.

22:13and elsewhere for years. It's probably driven a lot of the best and brightest out of the public sector, which is makes it a kind of a self-fulfilling critique. So, I mean, you talk about sort of bringing it back or restoring, you know, the role of the public to what it can be. How do you do that? I mean, it's fairly broken now. You know, we're not where we were maybe, you know, when Bell Labs was doing its thing. You know, how do we bring that back? So I think the answer is, I mean, it's a great question, and the answer is, you know, quite complex. I think there's different points. The first is the framing.

22:49You know, as I already mentioned, this idea that the public sector is at best there to fix a market failure, you know, that's the wrong narrative. It's the wrong framing. It's the wrong theory, which ends up informing policy. So I think the first thing is we just need to admit that this is about the shaping of markets and the co-creation of value, right? It's not that you have value creators on one side and then the market somehow forms and then the government comes in to fix the problems when they arise. In fact, all the different examples we gave, both the technology in our smart products, but also if you look at renewable energy and health innovation, the state was an investor, an investor in the actual value creation.

23:29That's just a fact, if you ask me. Again, I want to admit that this is all subjective. It's not nuclear physics. So once you admit that, the question is, what does that then mean for the organization of those public institutions? So they need to actually have a remit and, you know, make it explicit, talk about it, kind of come out of the closet that you are a value co-creator, you're a market shaper. And that means you're not there to level the playing field. Just think of all the language, leveling, at best enabling, de-risking. You are going to perhaps tilt the playing field towards a direction that you believe is important for society because you're public.

24:07You, you know, especially democratically elected, you know, where our governments are democratically elected, you know, not in countries with the dictator, say, you, you know, owe your resources back to what's good for citizens. So then the question is, how do you make sure that you actually have conversations about the public good, public value, public purpose? and unfortunately even in the U.S. where you actually have had a lot of government investments in things like the internet these discussions about then how to govern these areas in such a way that they're good for the public interest. Hey it's Kelly Rowland you may not know this but I have eczema so I get how it can steal your time but why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about ebglyss.

24:51Ebglyss, Lubrikizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two Milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EbGliss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to EbGliss. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems.

Read the full transcript

25:22You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EbGliss. Before starting EPCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about EPCLIS and visit EPCLIS.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. You want to know what quality sounds like? It sounds like a Ford Super Duty towing up to 40 ,000 pounds before the sun comes up. It sounds like a Ford Mustang doing what a Mustang does. Ford, J.D. Power's number one in initial quality among mainstream brands. Ready, set, Ford. When properly equipped, max towing varies based on cargo, vehicle configuration, accessories, and number of passengers.

26:03For J.D. Power 2026 U.S. initial quality study award information, visit jdpower.com slash awards. Awards based on 2026 model year. Newer models may be shown. So not just private profit haven't been as eloquent as they have been, for example, in the BBC. Again, I'm sitting in the U.K. where the BBC, a great public broadcaster, I'm sure you all, when you used to travel, would watch BBC News in your hotel rooms. They have always been driven by this notion of public value, which is simply not talked about in business schools or probably even in HBR great journals, right? So they didn't just limit themselves to fixing the market in an area like documentaries about giraffes in a region or high-quality news.

26:42They also did soap operas. They also did talk shows driven by an internal debate of what they thought was really kind of pathbreaking for society. So they did EastEnders, you know, a soap opera about the working class, basically, instead of just Dallas and Dynasty, which, you know, your American viewers will know what I'm talking about. At least the old ones like me. Anyway, so all these discussions about the metrics within the organization, which, of course, private sector organizations have had recently around ESG kind of targets when they want to become good companies. We actually need to bring that back to the public sector, and that's going to make it more exciting to work in it.

27:18You know, if you're a co-creator of value, if you're an investor of first resort, not just a lender of last resort, and if you internally have a dynamic debate of what's the right thing, what's the wrong thing to do, it makes it an exciting place to work. If you're just fixing markets, enabling, and at best de-risking some mythological risk taker that's out there, it's kind of boring. Of course, you'd rather go work in a risk-taking company. So let me just follow quickly then on the private side of the public-private question. You know, I sensed a certain skepticism, maybe dismissiveness in your comments about being in Davos and in your book.

27:59They won't invite me back now, I guess. No, no, no. They need to be there. But anyway, you know, so so it's easy to say that the companies are, you know, are just profit motivated, that they're talking the talk, but not walking the walk. But, you know, or is it is it significant that after 50 years of companies kind of lining up with a Milton Friedman-esque approach to we have to serve shareholders? That's our fiduciary duty. That's probably required by law. The conversation has moved, you know, and and and it's fine to be cynical. And you have to, as you said, you know, there need to be test cases.

28:39But it seems to me something significant has happened in the boardrooms of big U.S. corporations and European corporations that were not in the same place that we were certainly 50 years ago, but maybe even five years ago. I agree. And I didn't mean to be dismissive. I know it's easy to sound dismissive when it's late in the day and you're – No, what I'd like to say, I mean, what I really meant to say, and I guess this is dismissive, is to say, look, let's just stop talking about this. Right. You know, the notion of stakeholder value is actually not new. Let's do it. Let's actually do it. And the only way to do it is to do it in a super practical way, which is actually to test out what it looks like.

29:22If we can't do it with vaccine production, if we can't do it with a therapy for COVID, which is from Desivere, which is being put out by Gilead, and even though it's had huge amounts of public investment, it's going for over$3 ,000 a dosage, that doesn't feel very purpose-driven. And so my point is that purpose, a really great concept that we shouldn't be dismissive about, needs to go to the center of the system. It can't just be inside a discussion about corporate governance. It has to go, for example, at the center of how public and private relate one to another. And so with COVID, we have in the U.S.

30:00over$2 trillion being put by the government into the system. In Europe, over$1 trillion. In Japan, similarly. What does it look like for those funds which are at the center of the public-private relationship to actually be purpose-driven? Or even pre-COVID, one example I'll give you just to be super practical is the steel sector, which is not a sexy sector that you probably think about very much, but globally is in trouble and has been asking to be bailed out and helped globally by governments, including in the U.S. In Germany, the funds that were given by the public bank called the KFW in Germany to the steel sector was conditional on that sector reducing its material content, which they ended up doing through repurpose, reuse, recycle methods throughout their whole value chain.

30:49They're now one of the most innovative and green sustainable steel sectors in the world. And they didn't do that because they woke up and said we need to be purpose driven or join the business roundtable. They did it because they had to in order to get the government assistance. And I think this point about conditionalities, however, will be really strong if we don't see it as a penalty, you know, a condition like a mother. I've got four kids. I'm putting conditions on them all the time. You can't eat until you do your room. That's not really the right spirit. It's actually the spirit of the business roundtable, which is to say, let's do this stuff better.

31:21Let's be long termist. Let's do what's good for the community, the planet and workers and the environment. That's the planet, I guess. But let's do it in a practical way. So I just think that COVID-19 and 2021, which is the year on the back of that after a terrible year, let's get our hands dirty and get serious about doing this in the vaccine production and the therapies and our health systems and the Green Deal, bringing it back to the agenda, but at the center of the recovery funds. So just a reminder for everyone watching, if you have a question for Professor Matukatu, please do post it in the comments because we're getting those shortly.

32:00Mariana, you're about to launch your new book, Mission Economy, which will be published in January in the UK and in March in the US. In that book, you advocate that we need a moonshot to rethink the capacities and role of government within the economy and the society. The moment we're in, as you said, is pivotal. Earlier in this conversation, you talked about Kerala and what's happening in Vietnam. Which governments, in your opinion, are leading the way and what are they doing specifically that stands out?

32:34Mariana? Great. I hope you can still hear me. Oh, yes, we can hear you. Can you still hear me? I think I shot out there for a minute. Yes. Yes, you're back. You're back. Did you hear my question, Mariana? Can you hear me? Oh, dear. Yes. We can hear you. Yes. Can you hear us? God, I love live. Yeah, can you hear me? Am I back? Oh, God, okay. You're back. But, you know, this is Brexit. It must be Brexit. We're in a pandemic. We're in different countries. To be honest, it is probably these kids. They're all back with their digital thing. No, it might be me. When I host, this seems to happen, and I know Adi's going to give me a hard time about it now.

33:22Quick answer. No, I'm sure the problem's on my end. So, I mean, look, I usually say it's not about the country. It's about the organizations and certain things that are happening in those countries. And I can point to you really interesting things happening even in countries that are not getting their national priorities straight. But let me just give you a good example of a country. Sweden currently has a mission. And maybe, wait, maybe I should just backtrack. The point of the book is to say we have these sustainable development goals, 17 of them. We actually agreed on them globally in 2005, only five years ago, right?

33:57This is not that long ago. what does it mean to turn those challenges societal challenges into moonshots so you go from the very broad 17 goals into moonshots that are inspirational right so the clean oceans one SDG 14 you make that a plastic free ocean and all of a sudden that opens up the possibility of all sorts of collaborations innovation across many different sectors you know going to the moon required innovation and nutrition electronics materials software to a large extent the whole software industry was a spillover trying to get to the moon. But especially what's interesting with the Apollo program is that the procurement policy, so the tools that government used to relate to the private sector really fostered lots of bottom-up innovation.

34:43It wasn't technocratic. I mean, they definitely had a top-down goal, but how they got there was definitely bottom-up. And that's what we need to do with the SDGs. So again, the plastic-free ocean one, you can imagine all sorts of different experiments and projects that would be required to do that. But we need to then bring that down to the design of the pools themselves, whether it's procurement, grants, loans, prize schemes. And Sweden, just coming now to your question, is interesting because they've set a mission nationally, which is about a fossil-free welfare state. And that's quite broad, but it's also quite specific, right?

35:23Public education, public health, public transport. And then go even further, school meals, right? I mean, with COVID, we've discovered that so many kids, their only healthy meal, or in some cases, only meal is in school. So, of course, we need to make sure those school meals continue to get delivered. So in the UK, for example, there's been a voucher scheme. So even during the lockdown, the kids had access to it. But we should make sure these school meals themselves are fostering innovation across the whole value chain of production, distribution, and consumption. And Sweden has a healthy, tasty, so not just IKEA meatballs, sustainable school meal mission.

36:01And I just think that's a really good example because it's so easy just to focus again on the kind of quantum computing, AI, you know, big data stuff. But the stuff we do every day can be really kind of boring and static or super innovative. And getting governments to think about their whole spectrum of different things that they deliver every day for people from public transport, public housing, and school meals as a funnel for innovation, investment, collaboration with the private sector to deliver on public goals, that's what I mean by the moonshot approach. Wonderful. So before we go to audience questions, I do have a question for you about Europe.

36:40With the December 31st deadline for a trade agreement between the EU and the UK approaching, the risk of a no deal Brexit is mounting. There have been numerous headlines and studies about the financial impact of Brexit on the UK economy, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the broader economic ramifications for the remaining EU member states. When we consider the fallout of potentially a no-deal Brexit coupled with the economic contraction as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, can Europe bounce back? Well, Europe can definitely bounce back. And Europe is currently, again, you know, I really think the recovery program in Europe is incredibly ambitious.

37:17It's conditional on investments around huge public problems around the climate crisis, as I mentioned, digitalization and strengthening our health systems. The real warning sign to the rest of the member states, you know, and I'm Italian, but grew up in New Jersey and live in the UK. So I'm this weird kind of, you know, animal. so I feel that I can lecture people about what to be aware of in all these different countries because they're all interesting to learn from, is that what actually drives business investment, and listen to Warren Buffett when he talks about this, it's not a tax cut or the cost of doing something.

37:53It's the perception of where future opportunities lie. And the real problem with Brexit is that in a country which was already experiencing lagging productivity and really lagging investment, right? So GDP is not a perfect measure, but you can track investment, the business investment side of things. By reducing the size of the market that the UK is in, that reduces business investment even more than it was before, because the perception of the future market and also opportunities that are available by being within a global market that can actually negotiate properly with the US and China has massively diminished.

38:30Now, but that wouldn't be enough. What's also interesting is Europe has historically actually been the place where real debate and struggles for improving environmental conditions, working conditions happened. And those then trickled down at the member state level. And what's so interesting with Brexit is the first thing that the UK government did is say, oh, finally, we don't have to abide by these environmental regulations anymore or working regulations. And that's such a back, you know, a backwards movement. We need to progress. We need to go, you know, do what we've been talking about, which is bring public purpose, challenge-oriented thinking, and bring different forces to the table, which include, of course, labor unions, which have historically got us the weekend.

39:16Do people realize that the weekend got, you know, was fought for? The eight-hour workday was fought for. So really the question is, what are these modern kind of struggles that we should all be talking about and what are the forces that we need to kind of to get there and is just building walls whether Trump's wall or the Brexit wall going to help us get there or is it actually opening ourselves up to not just international competition which is often talked about but that debate about what we need as a society to be more inclusive and sustainable and unfortunately the Brexit debate has gone you know has brought us backwards on that so Europe is bringing us forwards and you know it's too bad and I really hope that the decision will be reversed somehow we'll see that a no-deal Brexit is terrible or even a crappy deal Brexit is terrible but anyway this is too political so I do just want to share some feedback that we have from our highly engaged audience we have hello from Luxembourg from Shiva my favorite economist and Christopher says I would give anything to be on this call and join so thank you for being with us today.

40:24I do want to share a question from Rachel in Minnesota, your professor, and she's asking, what role does higher education play in supporting the role of public sector innovation, and can there be better partnerships? Oh, what a great question. So I think it's, and I'm not sure if I'm tackling this in the right way, but first of all, education is fundamental. The reason I actually set up the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London three years ago, is that I believe that better policy needs new training, needs also new education for civil servants globally, to get them out of this notion of kind of new public management, public choice theory, which has basically convinced global bureaucrats that the best they can do is, again, fix markets, and that government failure is even worse than market failure.

41:08So take up as little space as you can and then get out of the way. So that's one side of the answer, which is I actually think we need a new education program for bureaucrats. There's no reason that the word bureaucratic should be a negative word. We need bureaucracies. We just need dynamic, creative bureaucracies. But the other question is education, education, education. That is really the biggest level. Having an education system which is kind of a two-track one, so one, say, private education and the public education system being underfinanced is a key driver of inequality. But that's not necessarily about higher education.

41:45That's literally from day one when you enter a nursery and when you finish high school. And, you know, I went to Princeton High School in New Jersey, a public high school. And unfortunately, what I've seen definitely in London and in the U.S. and in Italy is an underinvestment, not just in terms of money, but the imagination of what public education is for. And can I say something super provocative? Of course. Yeah, definitely. Just abolish private education. If you had pushy mothers in every school, you know, I just actually think public education is something we should all be talking a lot more about and strengthening it, just like we should strengthen public health systems.

42:28But higher education in terms of universities, you know, there's it's just so fundamental. We know that. I mean, so much of the research that has led to both the vaccine production in Oxford, which, by the way, is a public university, state university, anyway, and also the innovation that, again, got us Google's algorithm through a grant given by the National Science Foundation to Stanford University. You know, you could just go on and on. It's, you know, public education and public research is fundamental. The problem is that by just assuming that it's important without actually bringing it to the table and redesigning how we actually bring together academia, public funding, private sector funding, but also the small, medium, large companies and, you know, to different degrees, the science industry linkages, then we're missing the trick of how to actually engage public education with the greatest problems of our time.

43:25And I mentioned before, I think I did, you know, that it's not just about STEM subjects. It's not just natural sciences that are important. It's also the humanities, you know, poetry, you know, literature, the arts are so fundamental for making us think differently. And it's not a coincidence that the plastic free mission that I mentioned before has become very much in the mind of kids. and again I have four of them they all know the plastic free mission on the back of a documentary that was made by David Attenborough called the blue planet so bringing the cultural sector and the humanities in academia in higher education to the table in these discussions I think is so important it helps us reimagine what kind of lives we want to be living and how to live together in a better way yes thank you for that I'm going to go to one more question and from the audience Earlier, you talked about the sustainability goals that the General Assembly of the UN put in place five years ago for 2030.

44:23And I know you were recently announced as a chair of the Council for the World Health Organization. Vera from Rome has asked, what role can the UN and other international organizations have in fostering private and public partnerships? I think it is through the SDGs, which, by the way, weren't handed down from the UN. There was a massive stakeholder engagement. They were debated, they were chosen globally. And the UN convened that conversation and then allowed these really ambitious 17 goals with 169 targets beneath them to be at the center stage. And I think what the UN should then do is really make sure that the everyday stuff we do, especially that governments do, because in the end it's the governments sort of at the table with the United Nations, that they bring those SDGs to the center.

45:17And in some ways, coming back to Adi's point, the private sector in some ways has been leading on this by having a debate, at least, in the Davos kind of areas about ESG and beyond ESG, just making purpose and the sustainability targets to be more relevant for company governance. But what does it mean for governments to bring them to the center of what they do, whether it's industrial strategy, which is not just a list of sectors to support, but how all the different sectors work together to deliver those goals, innovation policy, procurement policy. see, again, a huge chunk of government budgets, often over 30 percent, is dedicated to procurement, how they purchase stuff, whether it's desks for schools, hospital beds, you know, cement for the roads.

46:01You can bring sustainability to the center of those processes of purchasing, as well as obviously even more so with investing. So I think the more the UN can help build that capacity on the ground to bring the SDGs away from just being this abstract kind of philosophical point, as important as ethics and morality and solidarity is to the everyday. Make it boring. Make it so we all have to do it. It's embedded in the design of how the system works. Mariana, thank you so much for joining us. You clearly have this very energized fan base and lots of questions. Sorry we couldn't get to all of them.

46:39We tried. Thank you, Octavia, for bringing as much feedback as you could. And thanks to my co-host. Thanks to the sponsor as well, to our sponsor. I also just want to let you know we're off for the next couple weeks. We're back on January 5th. And then on January 19th, when we end our season, we'll have our special guest back, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Not a moment too soon. That should be a lot of fun. So thank you all for pinning in and have a safe and pleasant holiday.

47:31And we're back. It's the HVGARDEN now after show.

47:40You're a couple hours ahead of us. Yeah. This is a good one. I'm Italian. So my husband has abandoned me for seven weeks to go to his other, no, just kidding. He doesn't have another phone. He went on a film, what do you call it? Production. He's a film producer. He's just come back and brought wine and salami. Was he on location filming something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, which is actually quite exceptional because most film production, yeah. He does artsy-fartsy films that win every festival but don't make enough money.

48:17So I have a question about something we didn't get to, which is, you know, you write a lot about how we're not measuring the right things when we think about the value of the economy. But, you know, that discussion often then gets into a discussion of happiness and a discussion of universal basic income, maybe, you know, and ultimately a discussion about why do we live? Do we live to work? Do we work to live? And I find, you know, you talk about things like universal basic income and people say, yeah, you can't have that because our whole identity and self-worth is wrapped up in work. I'm not so sure it is.

48:54I could imagine a different sense of happiness and fulfillment that isn't that. But you've researched this a lot more. I'm really curious what you think about that. You know, so I began the book, The Value of Everything, with this quote by Plato, if you can call it a quote, that storytellers rule the world. And I really think we need to change the narrative. So my problem with universal basic income is less about the economics of it, but the narrative. It still feels like a handout. It feels like someone else is creating wealth, and then somehow the money arrives to government, which then writes a check to citizens.

49:32Whereas I prefer the notion of a citizen's share, a citizen's dividend, or a public wealth fund, which puts the citizen who has helped to create that value in a way that, by the way, Warren Buffett is always reminding us. I think I mentioned before, he always says, I have benefited from a massive amount of social value that's been created. Bill Gates himself often admits that. Peter Thiel doesn't, by the way. Let's not name too many people. Probably one of your sponsors. Not now. He was going to come in next week. I'm not embarrassed by doing this. Admitting that wealth is co-created by all sorts of different actors, not only the public sector, but all the workers and citizens that are part of that means that that should then be distributed.

50:23redistributed back. And that's about pre-distribution, not just redistribution. So I don't know if I'm putting out too much lingo there. But the reason I like the citizen's share, the citizen's dividend, or public wealth funds, it is about getting the conditions right ex ante, not just picking up the mess afterwards with a check that sent it. JOHN MCWHORTER - I think that's what politicians like Andrew Yang were trying to get across with that kind of dividend notion. And then Adi, to the point, I think his point at least was taken was that people actually do find meaningful work that they can't really afford to do it's just other ways of creating value which is what i i love a lot of like your conversation around you know value extraction for just moving assets around basically but not necessarily doing anything to move society forward but people get really rich that way yeah well you know what's interesting again going back to the book on value i i luckily just wrote one chapter, but it could have been much longer, and 400 years of thinking about value.

51:24And I went back to the physiocrats who were writing about this in the 1700s. And the first ever spreadsheet was made in the 1700s by this guy, Francois Connet, who was one of the physiocrats. And they were really worried about all the value that was being extracted out of the system by the landlords. And they called the landlords the sterile class, literally sterility, in the sense that they would put the reproduction of the system, you know, these interesting concepts at risk. And I think if you look at global finance, you know, again, in the UK where I'm sitting, 80 % of finance goes back to finance, you know, finance, insurance, and real estate.

52:05The acronym is FIRE. We could tell Greta Thunberg, because she says, you know, the planet is on fire. We're not acting. Actually, the financial system is also on fire because it's been financing itself. And so how do you get that financial system to be reinvested or finance, sorry, global finance to be reinvested back into A, the real economy, and the real economy that's actually driven by, again, goals. And that's not because a government official is telling them that, but that's actually what makes our global system more reproductive. And that's why this concept of the circular economy is really important, you know, making sure that we're both reducing waste, but we actually have this kind of circular system where the value that's being created is reinvested back into what makes us all better off in the planet and we're resilient to crises, whether it's a health crisis or a climate crisis.

52:55But they were talking about that 300 years ago. And the problem with Trump is he kind of brought us back even 100 years earlier than the physiocrats. And that was the mercantilist period where all they cared about was exchange rates, terms of trade, you know, the 1651 Navigation Acts. You know, so it was all about building barriers and thinking about who's screwing who. Sorry, this is the after party, right? Yeah, yeah, we can go blue now. Yeah, yeah. I'm drinking out of a false wine cup, so no one knows if it's green tea or white wine. But yeah, so I think what's really important that Biden can do now is to kind of transform that, you know, make America great again is not about the mercantilist period.

53:39It's about an investment program. but what are we investing in and who's deciding and how can we get citizens to believe again and why politics matters. So also bringing in citizen assemblies to be part of, you know, the discussion about what we need to be solving. Yeah. But the finance people are the most productive people on the planet. Yeah. I mean, we have so many good plans. And I think about the good plans for climate change and, you know, net zero, they cost a lot of money. And I, you know, I can be optimistic when I read the plans and then pessimistic just because I don't quite see where all the money is going to come from to lead the transformations that we need, some of which you've talked about, some of which are climate related.

54:26Am I being too pessimistic here? Well, you need to look at the numbers. $4 trillion having been spent on share buybacks in the last 10 years, that's a wasted opportunity, right? So the money's there. The question is, where is it being spent on? And so you could argue, yeah, fine, but companies can do what they want with their money. The question is, right, where did that money come from? Where did those profits come from? So as soon as we, again, admit this massive social, collective value creation process, there should be much more discussion of where these funds, the revenues, you know, actually are going.

55:06And it's not a lack of funds. It's a misdirection. And also in terms of governments, when we go to war, which we do, you know, World War I, World War II, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, you know, whatever. You can go on and on. Have you ever heard, even in the movies about these wars, anyone saying, oh, dear, we don't have the money. We can't go. They create the money. When it's war, we create the money. So money can be created. That's the whole MMT debate, modern monetary theory, in the US. I think one of the problems with that debate is that it's still a political process, right? So again, the narrative, the discussion of what we say is urgent, that's what needs to change.

55:45So making these social goals around our welfare states, like public education, public health, the future of mobility, which is sort of a public transport, but not only problem at the center stage of how we bring together different actors and say, this is urgent. You know, this is Greta's point. Greta says, Greta Thornburg, 16 now, what is she? 17 now. She says, if your house is on fire, you don't sit there and debate. Oh, should I leave? You know, what should I bring with me? That book or that quilt? You just get the hell out, you know? So when you say something is an emergency, you act. The problem is we've allowed security concerns and wartime scenarios to be seen as an emergency or climate change when it's too late, when the fires or the floods are out there.

56:33It's kind of too late to wait for fires and floods to be really at that kind of urgency and emergency phase. So how can we proactively, preemptively say that these, I always go back to the SDGs. I'm going to keep doing that until we actually solve them. Those are urgent, but they have to be nested within conversations that are local. They're kind of too abstract. You have to bring it to the city level, to the regional level, to the national level. It makes sense of it, but the only way to do that is to bring different voices. And that's where, sorry, I will shut up in a second. I do think that we need to benefit from the Black Lives Matter movement, the Fridays for the Future movement, and bring movements, you know, make this a movement.

57:15We need to make it a movement. So bringing different voices to the table for the design phase. It can't just be reactive. So I actually have a question. It's a little bit off topic from some of the great stuff you were just discussing, but I think it ties in and it's a little seasonal. And it reminded me of some of the stuff you were saying about communities and value. As an economist, what is your favorite Christmas movie or holiday movie? I'm thinking of things like It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol with Scrooge, who is just an air version of, you know, someone who's a landlord and a debt collector.

57:53I don't know if there were any, if there's like a holiday movie that you watch as the economist and think, huh, they still do that today. I mean, the great thing of It's a Wonderful Life is it just made people realize why having, you know, a kind of a federal reserve system and the guarantee is important. We kind of forget that these things that we all benefit from came out of a crisis. But also just the deeply personal, you know, how it affects people, you know, because you go to this kind of systemic change that we need, you know, what's the equivalent of innovation like that in the Federal Reserve today to defend us against the biggest risks we have, which aren't just financial risks, but climate risks.

58:35What would be the equivalent of that, right? It's going to make it so wonderful life in 30 years around climate and not banking. Yeah, it's not snowing in Bedford Falls at that point. Yeah, but what I love about that was that it was so deeply personal. There was families both within the banking sector and not. And I feel like, you know, this comes back to my trade union point. People forget that stuff we take for granted was fought for. You know, often people died for things that we all are benefiting from. And, you know, labor is, sorry, I keep, I sound very ideological, but labor's share is at a record low.

59:11The profit share is at a record high. That's not going to be solved by an economist. That's not going to be solved by a politician or a CEO of the Dallas type. Sorry, I'm going to dismiss Dallas again. That's going to be solved by a battle. And how all these different forces, the business community, the different public forces, but citizens are battling it out. I just think we need to talk about that more. And actually, the Harvard Business Review should talk about it more, because we should remember it was movements that even got us the AIDS drug. It's what got us birth control. It's what got, you know, the suffragettes, the voting.

59:50You know, it's what got us the civil rights movement. You know, these are huge innovations, social innovations. Well, the question is, you know, how do you change the world? I mean, we've published some great pieces in the last few years, first of all, on, you know, breaking down the whole concept of shareholder primacy, that it is, you know, flawed logic and not even really a matter of law. You know, we did a really great piece, The Case Against Stock Buybacks. Yep. With Bill Hassan. Last week on the show, we had Dan Schulman, who was the only Davos guy I found who's actually willing to talk about labor.

1:00:27Usually when labor comes up or the power of unions, everyone is like, yeah, no. I'm all for the stakeholders, but union, I'm out of here. The question is, how does change happen? And it probably happens when you don't realize it. It's an accumulation of little moves, and then something changes. Or maybe it's a revolution. I don't know, but I, we're, we're in there fighting the fight. You know, the system's broken and, and we're all trying to do what we can to try to fix it. I agree with you. All right. I think we have to let you go, right? I know we do. This is great. You have to come back. I will.

1:01:05I will. Invite me back once the book's out.

1:01:12Reorder the book. It's a recipe book. It's a recipe book. Mariana, we want the book Yeah, of course you want Wait, what do you mean you want the book? We thought we might get some sort of sneak preview Or something I thought you wanted it on sale No, I mean, I'll buy the book In the US, it's out in March So we've got three months to organize the next session Reorder now Maybe we're together And we actually have a real conversation Because we get together in person In London or something Yeah, that'd be fantastic. All right. But until then, happy holidays. Happy New Year. Ciao, ciao. Thank you.

1:01:55See you later, producer Dave. Bye-bye. Thanks.

From the publisher

Why the World’s “Scariest Economist” Thinks We’re at a Tipping Point

16 Dec 2020

---

Mariana Mazzucato, who has been called “one of the three most important thinkers about innovation.” is urging all of us to seize the moment and remake a more fair, just, and equitable world for all.

At this tipping point for our economy, we talk with Mazzucato about what the path to recovery could and should look like.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
At Harvard Business Review, we believe in management. If the world’s organizations and institutions were run more effectively, if our leaders made better decisions, if people worked more productively, we believe that all of us — employees, bosses, customers, our families, and the people our businesses affect — would be better off. So we try to arm our readers with ideas that help them become smarter, more creative, and more courageous in their work. We enlist the foremost experts in a wide range of topics, including career planning, strategy, leadership, work-life balance, negotiations, innovation, and managing teams. Harvard Business Review empowers professionals around the world to lead themselves and their organizations more effectively and to make a positive impact.

Sign up for Newsletters: https://hbr.org/email-newsletters

Follow us:
https://hbr.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvard-business-review/
https://www.facebook.com/HBR/
https://twitter.com/HarvardBiz
https://www.instagram.com/harvard_business_review

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More from Harvard Business Review

All 539 episodes
Why the World's "Scariest Economist" Believes We're at a Tipping PointHarvard Business Review · 1 h 3 min
Listen in VO