The Mission-Oriented State

The dominant theory of the state’s role in innovation rests on a single assumption: the state funds, the market builds, and the distribution of returns is the market’s business. Mariana Mazzucato’s mission-oriented framework overturns this assumption by pointing to the documentary record. The Apollo programme did not land a human on the moon by regulating aerospace; it set a specific, publicly defined mission and organised collective effort around achieving it. DARPA did not merely correct market failures in computing and networking; it created the internet by funding high-risk research no private investor would sustain. The entrepreneurial state is not a market-fixer identifying where markets have broken down and intervening at the margin. It is a market-maker identifying emerging technologies before the private sector, bearing the risks private capital refuses, and creating the conditions under which commercial application becomes viable. In the AI era this distinction matters urgently: a state that only regulates AI will shape it at the edges; a state that directs it