Title:Mission-Oriented Innovation and the Grand Challenges of the 21st Century

Speaker: Dr.Mariana Mazzucato
             Professor in the Economics of Innovation & Public Value, University College London (UCL)   Director
             UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Coordinator: Dr.Zheng Liang              
                  Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University
                  Deputy Director, China Institute for Science and Technology Policy at Tsinghua University

Time: 16:00-17:30,June 8, 2017 (Thursday)

Venue: Room 302, School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University

Language: English

Abstract:
Although industrial policy is back in fashion, it is often interpreted as a list of  ‘key’ sectors to support. The talk will focus on the opportunity to use industrial and innovation policy not to support individual sectors but to tackle societal and technological ‘grand challenges’ which require many different sectors to work together in new ways.  To do so, the presentation will first look at the dynamics of mission oriented investments of the past (e.g. the Apollo mission), and then consider their application to tackle modern day missions— from battling climate change to developing a modern care systems that can address the requirements of an ageing population.  The need to coordinate macroeconomic policy (fiscal stimulus), financial reform (rewarding patient long-term finance over speculative finance), and innovation policy (across entire whole innovation chain) will be stressed—as will the need to ‘de-financialise’ the real economy so that profits are reinvested back into production and innovation. 

Speaker Bio:
Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation & Public Value, University College London (UCL) and Director of UCL’s new Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She is author of the highly-acclaimed book The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (Anthem 2013; Public Affairs, 2015) and winner of the 2014 New Statesman SPERI Prize in Political Economy and the 2015 Hans-Matth？fer-Preis. Mazzucato has advised policymakers around the world on how to deliver ‘smart’, inclusive and sustainable growth.  In 2013 she was named as one of the '3 most important thinkers about innovation' in the New Republic.