Innovation Without Entrepreneurship: The Pipe Dream of Mission-Oriented Innovation Policy

Abstract

In this chapter, I analyze state entrepreneurship, as exercised through mission-oriented innovation policy: the mobilization of large pools of resources and capabilities to solve the pressing issues of our time. The state entrepreneur is not subject to real risk, often faces no market, and cannot be properly evaluated. It pays no price for being wrong and it struggles in assigning responsibility. Missions are motivated by a false dichotomy: that there is a difference in principle between fixing and creating markets. This premise is splitting hairs at best. Instead, what sets missions apart, other than sheer ambition, is a shift from bottom-up to top-down approaches to knowledge creation. Missions are most likely to achieve intended ends when reasonable people agree on the problem, what needs to be done, and when responsibility can be assigned. Even then, opportunity costs are ignored. The entrepreneurial state is currently pushing to solve those issues where it is likely to do the least good and the most harm: where we lack the knowledge of what to do, where accountability is unassigned, and where the failure-success axis cannot be meaningfully assessed. Successful mission policy further requires politics well beyond what democratic systems can achieve.