Fireside Chat with Mariana Mazzucato
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism
On March 27th, I had the privilege of attending Harvard’s Social Enterprise Conference for 2021. I chose to attend the Mariana Mazzucato’s session on changing capitalism because I was interested in what areas of capitalism she thought would need to be bettered.
She modeled her ideas for bettering capitalism off of the development of space travel in the US. She emphasized the importance of a unified goal like that of N.A.S.A.’s . She also pointed out that in order to be successful, everyone in the organization had to be on the same page. In the beginning N.A.S.A. struggled with communication between departments, but once they strengthened their communication, their missions started to improve. She called this dynamic, horizontal communication. This kind of communication allowed N.A.S.A. to unite the departments under one common purpose of attaining space travel.
She also talked of the importance of being outcome oriented. This is an important aspect because it keeps people focused on their end goal instead of on each individual task (or each departmental goal). This caused people between departments to start communicating because they had to make sure everyone was on the same page.
She then related this model to government in general. She emphasized how government needs to identify their goals and mission and ensure that everyone understands what they are working towards. Each department or branch also needs to establish good communication so that these goals can be attained faster.
She says that the best way of approaching this is to have a portfolio mindset. This means that they should not put all their money in one place but rather spread it out so that they are able to explore what works best. However, this can be hard to accomplish since many people have become afraid of taking risks. What these people fail to realize thought is that without taking risks, they are also limiting their growth. To grow means to take risks, and in the end, those risks will pay off.
To learn more about Mariana Mazzucato and her research, visit her site at:
