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The 2025 Reynolds Lecture
Mission-oriented government: Building state capacity for the 21st century
Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, UCL; and Founding Director, UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose.
Thursday 23 October 2025
5.30 pm - 6.45 pm followed by drinks and networking
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
A mission-oriented approach to industrial strategy can tackle both the rate and direction of growth by moving beyond reactive market-fixing toward proactive market shaping. This requires rethinking the state from a passive corrector of market failures to an entrepreneurial investor that sets ambitious missions across all levels of government—from local to national—with whole-of-government coordination that breaks down departmental silos. The rise of the consulting industry has hollowed out essential public sector capabilities, creating dependency rather than building the internal institutional capacity for long-term strategic thinking and mission delivery that can confidently crowd-in private investment while embedding concrete conditionalities.
This approach demands moving from government as lender of last resort to investor of first resort, creating symbiotic partnerships where risks and rewards are shared. Rebuilding state capacity means investing in civil service expertise and governance structures that enable coherent policy delivery across multiple government levels. UCL IIPP’s Public Sector Capabilities Index provides the first global measure of government capacity. The talk will explore the need to build state capacity and reimagine the state for 21st century challenges—from the climate, water, and biodiversity crises to digital and health inequities.
References:
Mazzucato, M., Doyle, S. and Kuehn von Burgsdorff, L. (2024). Mission-oriented industrial strategy: global insights. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, IIPP Policy Report No. 2024/09. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2024/jul/mission-oriented-industrial-strategy-global-insights.
Mazzucato, M. and Rodrik, D. (2023). Industrial Policy with Conditionalities: A Taxonomy and Sample Cases. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Working Paper Series (IIPP WP 2023-07). Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/wp2023-07
Mazzucato, M., Vieira de Sá, R. (2025). Mind the mission, not the gap: Rethinking blended finance for public purpose. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Working Paper Series (IIPP WP 2025-09). ISSN 2635-0122
Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/publications/2025/jun/mind-mission-not-gap-rethinking-blended-finance-public-purpose
The Lecture will be followed by drinks and networking.
Biography
Mariana Mazzucato (PhD, CBE) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose. She is winner of international prizes including the Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 2021, Italy's highest civilian honour, the 2020 John von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She is a member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and the Italian Academy of Sciences Lincei. In 2025, she was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to economics in the King’s Birthday Honours List. Pope Francis appointed her to the Pontifical Academy for Life for bringing ‘more humanity’ to the world. As well as The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (2013), she is the author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (2018), Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (2021), and most recently The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies (2023). She advises policymakers around the world on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth. Her roles have included for example Chair of the World Health Organization's Council on the Economics of Health for All, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, a member of the South African President’s Economic Advisory Council, Co-Chair of the Group of Experts to the G20 Task Force for the Global Mobilization against Climate Change, and Special Representative of President Ramaphosa to the G20 Taskforce 1 on Inclusive Economic Growth, Industrialization, Employment, and Reduced Inequality.
About the Reynolds Lecture Series
Lord Richard Wilson established this annual lecture series in honour of Dame Fiona Reynolds, his successor as Master of Emmanuel College and is organised by CSAP, Bennett School of Public Policy and Emmanuel College.