Mission Economy

What if we could rebuild capitalism to tackle the climate crisis, inequality, and pandemics with the audacity of the moon landing? In Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, economist Mariana Mazzucato invites you to imagine exactly that. She argues that the same kind of visionary leadership and risk-taking that landed a man on the moon must now be applied to solving our planet’s deepest social and environmental challenges.

Mazzucato contends that capitalism has lost its sense of purpose. Businesses chase short-term gains and shareholders’ dividends, while governments—paralyzed by decades of neoliberal ideology—confine themselves to fixing market failures, outsourcing core functions, and avoiding risk. In this model, public institutions have been hollowed out, stripped of capability, and denied the creative confidence that once made them engines of innovation. As COVID-19 made clear, this leaves societies unable to respond effectively to crises that require coordination, direction, and ambition.

What’s Gone Wrong with Capitalism

Before proposing solutions, Mazzucato paints a sobering picture of capitalism in crisis. Finance largely funds itself—pouring money into real estate and speculation rather than productive innovation. Companies are obsessed with quarterly shareholder returns, spending billions on stock buybacks instead of research or worker training. Governments have been reduced to timid fixers and outsourcers, their muscle withered by decades of anti-government rhetoric and privatization. The planet, meanwhile, is burning—subsidies still flow to fossil fuels even as climate change accelerates. These systemic flaws, Mazzucato warns, are not inevitable; they are products of explicit choices and false economic beliefs.

Rediscovering the Moonshot Mindset

To find a way forward, Mazzucato revisits the moon landing—the archetypal example of coordinated risk-taking between government, business, and science. In 1962, John F. Kennedy announced one of history’s most audacious goals: to send a man to the moon and return him safely to Earth before the decade’s end. The resulting Apollo program harnessed over 400,000 workers, multiple industries, and a commitment to experimentation, improvisation, and learning from failure. NASA didn’t just fix problems; it shaped markets, drove innovation, and created entire new industries—including software, miniaturized electronics, and materials science. That mission was not about efficiency or return on investment; it was rooted in vision, faith, and curiosity.

Mazzucato challenges you to imagine applying that same “moonshot” ethos to today's “wicked” problems—reducing carbon emissions, curing diseases, narrowing the digital divide, or reforming capitalism itself. A true mission-oriented approach, she explains, is not just about setting big goals but transforming how governments and businesses work together: sharing risks and rewards, experimenting dynamically, and rebuilding public capabilities that foster creativity and purpose.

From Market Fixing to Market Shaping

Central to Mazzucato’s thesis is a rejection of “market failure theory” — the idea that markets naturally self-correct and government should intervene only when things go wrong. Instead, she calls for “market shaping”: proactive creation of new markets around societal goals, like clean energy or universal healthcare. In her view, public institutions should act as bold investors of first resort, not cautious lenders of last resort. They should define ambitious missions—such as a carbon-neutral economy—and mobilize resources across sectors to achieve them. Every stage of policy, from taxation to procurement, should be designed to serve public purpose, not private profits.

Why This Matters to You

Mazzucato’s argument isn’t an abstract theory—it’s a call to action for citizens, businesses, and policymakers. It asks you to reconsider what you expect from government: not just efficiency or minimal interference, but visionary leadership that invests in people and ideas. It urges companies to embrace purpose beyond shareholder returns and to contribute meaningfully to common missions. And it challenges you, as a citizen, to participate in shaping these missions—from the streets where you live to the global stage where climate and inequality are contested.

What You’ll Learn in This Summary

Across the coming key ideas, you’ll explore how the Apollo program offers lessons for government leadership and collaboration; why capitalism’s short-term financialization undermines innovation; and how mission-oriented policies—from the Green New Deal to digital inclusion—can reshape economies around public purpose. You’ll discover Mazzucato’s seven principles for a new political economy, emphasizing collective value creation, dynamic organizations, outcomes-based finance, fair distribution, and participatory governance. Above all, you’ll see that changing capitalism is not about tinkering—it’s about reimagining its purpose so that prosperity, justice, and sustainability become the shared missions of our time.

Mazzucato opens her diagnosis with a blunt conclusion: capitalism isn’t just inefficient—it’s broken. Despite economic growth, society faces widening inequality, environmental collapse, and fragile institutions. Most strikingly, she argues, the engine of capitalism—finance and business—has lost its connection to real value creation.

Finance Is Financing Itself

In the modern FIRE economy (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate), money circulates within the financial sphere, not toward productive investment. Only about one-fifth of bank lending goes to non-financial firms in the UK; the rest fuels speculation and property bubbles. When these bubbles burst, losses are socialized—governments bail out banks deemed “too big to fail”—while profits remain private. It’s a cycle that erodes faith in capitalism’s fairness.

Short-Termism and Shareholders

Corporate financialization mirrors the same short-termism. Businesses increasingly use profits not to innovate but to inflate stock prices through buybacks and dividends. Between 2009 and 2019, America’s top 500 firms spent nearly $4 trillion doing just that. Boeing spent 74% of free cash flow on buybacks; when COVID-19 hit, it begged for federal aid. Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and once an evangelist for shareholder value, later called it “the dumbest idea in the world.” (Note: Mazzucato echoes thinkers like Joseph Stiglitz and William Lazonick, who have made similar calls to reform corporate governance.)

Governments Have Grown Timid

Meanwhile, governments have ceded their capacity to act boldly. Neoliberalism taught civil servants to fear doing anything more ambitious than “fixing market failures.” In practice, that meant outsourcing critical functions—from healthcare to digital infrastructure—and treating efficiency metrics as an end in themselves. The COVID-19 crisis brutally exposed this weakness: countries like Vietnam and Kerala succeeded by leveraging strong public systems, while the UK and U.S., mired in outsourcing and consultancy contracts, stumbled through fiascos in testing and tracing.

A Fragile, Unsustainable Planet

Perhaps the most catastrophic outcome of this broken system is ecological. The global economy remains addicted to fossil fuels, subsidizing them to the tune of tens of billions annually. Under current policies, we’re heading for over 3°C of warming—a level scientists warn will trigger irreversible climate breakdown. The irony, Mazzucato notes, is that governments still treat climate action as “too expensive” while spending even more to bail out financial institutions and fossil companies. The issue isn’t the size of government—it’s the absence of direction and purpose.

“Finance profits are private; its losses are public. We’ve rewarded speculation over innovation and efficiency over imagination.” —Mariana Mazzucato

Ultimately, Mazzucato argues that reforming capitalism begins with rethinking government itself—not shrinking it, but rebuilding its ability to steer the economy toward shared goals. Without a purposeful state to shape markets, she warns, capitalism will continue to generate crises rather than solutions.

According to Mazzucato, bad theory produces bad practice. The reason governments fail to act boldly isn’t just lack of money—it’s the outdated ideas that dominate economics and public management. She identifies five myths that have trapped policymakers in a cycle of timidity and outsourcing.

Myth 1: Only Business Creates Value and Takes Risks

This myth claims entrepreneurs innovate while governments merely regulate. Mazzucato dismantles it with evidence: sectors like tech and pharma owe their existence to public risk-taking. The U.S. Defense Department funded the internet; DARPA developed GPS and Siri; the National Institutes of Health backed most blockbuster drugs. The public sector, she insists, has been the true investor of first resort—and yet rarely receives credit or reward.

Myth 2: Government’s Role Is to Fix Market Failures

Market failure theory implies governments intervene only when markets malfunction. Mazzucato counters: markets don’t exist independently of policy—they’re shaped by it. Rather than fixing externalities like pollution, governments should proactively create markets around the outcomes society needs, such as clean air or accessible healthcare. The goal isn't correction but direction.

Myth 3: Government Should Run Like a Business

Efficiency culture—New Public Management—taught civil servants to emulate corporate metrics. Patients became “customers,” schools “providers.” But moonshots aren’t achieved through cost-benefit analysis. NASA couldn’t have gone to the moon if it had been measured by short-term efficiency. Ambition demands room for iteration, learning, and uncertainty—qualities bureaucracy suppresses when it mimics business.

Myth 4: Outsourcing Saves Money and Reduces Risk

From privatized railways to consulting contracts, outsourcing has hollowed out public capacity. The UK’s collapse of Carillion in 2018 revealed how the state became dependent on private contractors that underbid, underdeliver, and siphon profits into executive bonuses. Far from lowering risk, outsourcing infantilizes governments, stripping civil servants of expertise and strategic capability. As one UK minister lamented, Whitehall became “infantilized” by its reliance on consultants.

Myth 5: Governments Shouldn’t Pick Winners

Conventional wisdom warns that ‘picking winners’ distorts markets. Mazzucato responds: not picking any direction is itself a choice—one that perpetuates the status quo. Successful industrial policies, from South Korea’s digital TV initiative to Tesla’s early government-backed loans, show that selective bets create new markets. Failure is inevitable; learning is vital. The real error is socializing risk and privatizing reward, where governments absorb failures but never share in successes.

By exposing these myths, Mazzucato frees governments to reclaim their creative role. She urges them to ask not “How big should the state be?” but “What kind of state do we need to shape a better economy?” The answer, she insists, lies in a mission-oriented approach that values purpose over size, courage over caution.

The Apollo program offers more than a nostalgic story—it’s a practical manual for how bold missions succeed. Mazzucato identifies six guiding principles drawn from NASA’s experience: vision, experimentation, organizational flexibility, collaboration, outcomes-based financing, and symbiotic partnership with business.

Vision and Purpose

Kennedy’s leadership gave Apollo a clear and inspiring goal: “put a man on the moon and bring him back safely.” That vision united governments, firms, and citizens in a shared story. The janitor who told Kennedy he was “helping put a man on the moon” captured the power of collective purpose. Missions today, Mazzucato says, must similarly blend ambition with citizen engagement—vision paired with moral clarity.

Risk-Taking and Experimentation

Apollo thrived on trial, error, and resilience. Failure was expected, not punished—the deaths of Apollo 1’s crew led to redesign and renewed determination. NASA encouraged curiosity-driven experimentation through flexible contracts and delegated autonomy. Innovation arises, she reminds you, from exploration, not compliance.

Organizational Agility

NASA transformed bureaucratic silos into dynamic networks under George Mueller’s “systems management.” His five-box matrix fostered cross-department collaboration, rapid communication, and shared accountability. Businesses later copied this model to build the Boeing 747. Missions work when institutions balance top-down direction with bottom-up experimentation—a crucial lesson for modern governance.

Collaboration and Spillovers

Apollo’s impact extended far beyond space: integrated circuits, fire-resistant materials, and even the groundwork for modern computing all emerged as “spillovers.” Mazzucato highlights how moonshots yield unpredictable benefits when organizations embrace serendipity. Innovation flourishes when curiosity meets purpose—Viagra, she reminds us, was once a heart drug abandoned midstream until its side effects revealed new promise.

Financing for Outcomes, Not Inputs

NASA's budgeting emphasized outcomes, not yearly accounting. Apollo might have cost $25.8 billion, but its social and technological returns were enormous. Mazzucato challenges modern finance ministries to replace narrow cost–benefit calculations with long-term outcome-based budgeting. Missions should ask: “What do we want to achieve?” rather than “What can we afford?”

Public–Private Partnership with Purpose

NASA’s relationships with contractors like Grumman were symbiotic, not parasitic. Contracts rewarded innovation, penalized failure, and avoided “excess profits.” NASA kept in-house expertise to manage technology and maintain independence. By contrast, today’s outsourcing often leads to dependency. Effective missions, Mazzucato insists, require governments that are technically skilled enough to be equal partners, not passive clients.

Apollo teaches that when a nation defines purpose clearly, allows creativity to flourish, and invests in long-term outcomes, it can achieve the seemingly impossible. The same structure, she argues, could guide missions for green cities, universal healthcare, or digital inclusion—ambitions no less urgent than landing on the moon.

Having learned from Apollo, Mazzucato turns to today’s earthly challenges—the global crises mapped by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. She shows how mission-oriented policies can tackle complex issues like climate change, health inequality, and the digital divide through coordinated ambition.

Selecting and Structuring Missions

A mission must be bold, inspirational, measurable, and time-bound. It can be as tangible as reaching carbon neutrality in a decade or halving dementia by 2030. Missions unite multiple sectors and disciplines around shared goals. In Europe, Mazzucato helped design five mission areas—from cancer prevention to ocean cleanup—each designed to spark hundreds of cross-sector projects. The idea: pick directions, not individual winners, and let innovation emerge organically.

Implementing Missions

Policy tools—grants, procurement, loans, prizes—must be reimagined to reward outcomes. The UK’s Mission-Oriented Industrial Strategy transformed government procurement into a creative engine: buying innovation, not just products. Financing must be patient and flexible; evaluation must be dynamic, capturing spillovers and learning-by-doing rather than static cost-benefit ratios. (Note: This echoes the developmental state principles articulated by economist Ha-Joon Chang.)

Engaging Citizens

Social missions, unlike space missions, require deep citizen engagement. You can’t decarbonize cities or redesign health care without public participation. Mazzucato cites local examples—from Sweden’s ‘Healthy Streets’ initiative to Camden’s Renewal Commission in London—that put residents at the center of change. She insists that missions must be co-designed, not imposed, respecting diversity of voices and democratic legitimacy.

The Green New Deal

The flagship example is the Green New Deal. Inspired by Roosevelt’s New Deal and Kennedy’s moonshot, it demands economy-wide transformation: renewable energy, clean transport, sustainable housing, and just transitions for workers. Both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal in the U.S. and Ursula von der Leyen’s European Green Deal embrace Mazzucato’s idea of directionality—investing with purpose rather than patching failures. The challenge, she argues, is ensuring governments have the capacity and courage to lead it.

Whether the mission involves health innovation, dementia research, or bridging the digital divide, the principle remains the same: define ambitious goals that unite society. Rather than asking “How much money do we have?”, missions demand the question “What problem are we trying to solve—and how can all sectors collaborate to achieve it?”

To make missions work, capitalism itself must evolve. In her final section, Mazzucato offers seven principles for a political economy driven by public purpose rather than profit maximization. Together, they provide a blueprint for reimagining how value is created and shared.

1. Value Is Collectively Created

Wealth doesn’t spring from individual genius—it’s born of collective effort. Public institutions, private firms, and civil society all co-create value. Recognizing this requires redefining “public goods” not as afterthoughts but as shared goals—clean air, education, and health as outcomes to design for, not by-products to fix.

2. Markets Should Be Shaped, Not Fixed

Markets are not neutral—they’re built and guided. Government must actively tilt the playing field toward sustainable and inclusive growth: taxing speculative gains, rewarding long-term investments, and directing finance toward public-purpose innovation. In this model, failure becomes learning, and public spending becomes investment in collective progress.

3. Organizations Need Dynamic Capabilities

Institutions must learn, experiment, and adapt. Drawing on Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction,” Mazzucato argues that governments should develop the same dynamic capabilities that successful firms possess—risk-taking, iterative learning, cross-sector collaboration, and openness to failure.

4. Finance Must Focus on Outcomes

Instead of fear-driven budgeting, governments should align spending with outcomes. Echoing modern monetary theorists like Stephanie Kelton, Mazzucato explains that sovereign states can create money—but real limits come from productive capacity, not deficits. The right question isn’t “Can we afford it?” but “Can we marshal resources effectively to meet our mission?”

5. Share Risks and Rewards Fairly

Risk without reward breeds inequality. When public money funds innovation—whether it’s Tesla’s batteries or COVID vaccines—citizens deserve a return. That could mean equity stakes, public wealth funds, or conditions on corporate behavior that redistribute gains to society.

6. Foster Symbiotic Partnerships

Public–private partnerships should be mutualistic, not parasitic. Contracts and governance must embed public purpose—so companies receiving subsidies contribute to worker training, sustainability, and fair pay. Digital giants and pharmaceutical firms, she warns, must be regulated to align profits with public interests.

7. Participation and Co-Creation

Democracy must move from consultation to co-creation. Citizens should help design missions through assemblies and local initiatives. Inspired by thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Elinor Ostrom, Mazzucato envisions an open system shaped by debate, experimentation, and learning—a dynamic, participatory capitalism.

“Changing capitalism isn’t about fixing its flaws—it’s about redefining what it’s for.” —Mariana Mazzucato

Through these pillars, Mazzucato replaces an economy of extraction with one of shared creation. Purpose, she concludes, must be the organizing principle of twenty-first-century capitalism—only then can we build the cathedrals of innovation, justice, and sustainability that our world demands.