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Hall of Shoulders

Innovation

Mariana Mazzucato

Mariana Mazzucato is known for The entrepreneurial state, mission-oriented innovation, market-shaping/market-creating policy, public value, risk-and-reward sharing. **Purpose:** A citation-grounded application of Mazzucato's frameworks to contemporary space challenges, used as a review lens for COLLEGIUM space dissertation candidates.

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Review Lens

Adversarial questions for candidates

The falsifiable questions this brain puts to a dissertation candidate. They seed the pre-Conclave initial review whenever a candidate's topic matches the Innovation lens.

  1. 1

    Provenance of risk. "You attribute this commercial capability to private entrepreneurship. Trace the funding and capability chain to its origin: which actor bore the *pre-commercial* technological risk, and at what phase did private capital actually enter? Show me the evidence that the private actor, not public procurement or public R&D, created the demand." (Falsifiable against funding-history and procurement records.)

  2. 2

    Mission or procurement? "Is the program you study a genuine mission, directional, capability-building, spillover-generating, tolerant of bottom-up experimentation, or is it re-badged destination-procurement? Operationalize the difference and show me which one your evidence supports." (Falsifiable against program structure, spillover, and capability metrics.)

  3. 3

    Market-shaping vs. market-fixing test. "State, for your specific segment, whether the public role is better described as fixing a market failure (Weinzierl) or shaping/creating a market (Robinson & Mazzucato). What observation would distinguish the two, and does your data show it?" (Falsifiable: the two framings make different predictions about who created demand.)

  4. 4

    Risk-reward distribution. "If the public bore early risk, what did the public retain of the upside, IP, equity, royalty, reinvestment, public-option tiers? If nothing, defend why socializing risk while privatizing reward is the efficient or just arrangement here." (Falsifiable against contract and IP terms.)

  5. 5

    Public capability stewardship. "Does the agency in your case retain the dynamic capabilities (Kattel & Mazzucato) to remain an intelligent market-shaper, or has it hollowed out into a passive purchaser? Identify which in-house functions are load-bearing and whether they have eroded." (Falsifiable against agency staffing, in-house engineering, and decision-rights data.)

Core Concepts & Space Translation

The Entrepreneurial State

The proposition that the state is not merely a market-failure-fixer of last resort but the lead risk-taker and first investor in the most uncertain, capital-intensive, early phases of radical innovation. The public sector shapes and creates markets that did not previously exist, rather than only correcting under-investment. *Key work:* Mazzucato, *The Entrepreneurial State* (2013), as engaged in Hawkins's review (2014, doi:10.1093/scipol/scu071) and formalized in Dosi, Lamperti & Mazzucato (2023, doi:10.1016/j.jedc.2023.104650).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Mission-oriented innovation policy (MOIP)

Reorienting innovation policy around bold, directional, societally-framed "missions" (analogous to the Apollo program) that mobilize cross-sectoral investment and capability building toward a clear goal. Missions are evaluated on whether they catalyze bottom-up experimentation and spillovers, not on narrow cost-benefit. *Key work:* Mazzucato, "Mission-oriented innovation policies: challenges and opportunities" (2018, doi:10.1093/icc/dty034).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Market-shaping and market-creating vs. market-fixing

The central analytic contrast. Orthodox economics limits the state to "fixing" market failures (public goods, externalities, under-investment in R&D). Mazzucato argues the more consequential public role is to actively *shape and create* markets and technological trajectories. *Key work:* Mazzucato & Semieniuk, "Public financing of innovation: new questions" (2017, doi:10.1093/oxrep/grw036); Robinson & Mazzucato (2018, doi:10.1016/j.respol.2018.10.005).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Public value and risk-reward sharing

Value is co-created collectively by public and private actors; the state that bears innovation risk should also share in the upside (equity, royalties, retained IP, reinvestment conditions) rather than socializing risk and privatizing reward. *Key work:* Mazzucato & Li, "The Entrepreneurial State and Public Options" (2021, doi:10.1017/9781108767552.003); Hawkins (2014).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Dynamic capabilities in the public sector

For missions to work, public agencies need internal capacity to design, learn, adapt, and steward complex programs, rather than outsourcing intelligence to consultants and contractors. Hollowed-out agencies cannot shape markets. *Key work:* Kattel & Mazzucato, "Mission-oriented innovation policy and dynamic capabilities in the public sector" (2018, doi:10.1093/icc/dty032).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Directionality and grand challenges

Innovation has a *direction*, not just a *rate*; policy should consciously steer that direction toward grand societal challenges, accepting that picking directions (not picking winners) is a legitimate and unavoidable public choice. *Key work:* Mazzucato (2018); Edler & Fagerberg (2017, doi:10.1093/oxrep/grx001).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.