# Mariana Mazzucato's Mission Economy explained: what mission-oriented policy is

> Mission Economy (2021) argues that governments should start from the goals society needs, such as clean cities or beating disease, and organise public budgets, firms and research around them, as NASA did with Apollo. Mazzucato sees the state as an investor that creates and shapes markets and should share in the rewards. Her 2018 report for the European Commission set five criteria for missions, which shaped the EU's Horizon Europe missions. The radical-centre reading keeps the ambition and adds a hard discipline: a measurable target, open competition between routes, public results and money that stops when a route fails.

- URL: https://www.radicalcentre.eu/en/articles/mariana-mazzucato-mission-economy-explained
- Language: en
- Publisher: radical centre / centro radical
- Published: 2026-11-10
- Topic: Economy & work
- Author: radical centre
- Licence: CC BY 4.0

## Key points

- Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism was published by Allen Lane in 2021; Mariana Mazzucato holds a chair at University College London and founded its Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
- The book asks governments to start from what needs doing, and to act as creators and shapers of markets that share in the rewards of the risks they take.
- Her 2018 report for the European Commission set five criteria for missions, including a clear target and timeframe and multiple bottom-up solutions, and proposed examples such as 100 carbon-neutral cities by 2030.
- Spain's version is the PERTE: 11 strategic projects mobilising more than €30 billion of public investment, mostly organised by sector.
- John Kay's critique is the strongest: Apollo worked because its goal was narrow and its science known, conditions most social problems lack.

Mariana Mazzucato's *Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism* came out with Allen Lane in 2021, with a Penguin paperback in 2022. It is the strongest case on this week's reading list for an ambitious state, and the one radical centrism has to answer when it talks about productivity, which Democracia 21 put first among its economic problems at its launch (see [our overview of the party's proposals](/en/articles/democracia-21-miriam-gonzalez-proposals-radical-centre)). Mazzucato holds the chair in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London, where she founded the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. In 2018 she became special adviser on mission-driven science and innovation to Carlos Moedas, then the EU's research commissioner, so her ideas have shaped real European budgets.

On day 29 we set her against Hayek in [Mazzucato vs Hayek](/en/articles/mazzucato-vs-hayek-who-knows-where-the-economy-should-go). This piece explains the book itself, what Brussels and Madrid did with it, and where its critics land their blows.

## What the book argues

The book starts from the Moon landing. Its publisher's description asks what would happen if the boldness behind Apollo, which needed new collaboration between NASA and private companies, were turned on climate change, disease and inequality. Mazzucato wants governments to pursue goals society has chosen through innovation, and to plan their budgets for the long term.

The philosopher Ingrid Robeyns, reviewing the book on Crooked Timber in 2021, gives the clearest summary of its structure. Governments, Mazzucato says, should ask what needs doing before they ask how much money there is, and then rebuild budgets and partnerships around the answer. She traces capitalism's troubles to four sources: financial short-termism, the financialisation of business, the climate emergency, and governments that are slow or absent. She blames New Public Management, the habit of running the state like a contractor-managing business, for hollowing out public capacity.

Apollo, in her telling, worked through risk-taking, experimentation, learning from failure and clear communication inside NASA. The lesson she draws is a new role for the state: a creator and shaper of markets, and an "investor of first resort" whose early money crowds in private finance. She uses Tesla as an example of a firm that took public risk capital while the state took no share of the success. The book closes with seven pillars for a mission-oriented political economy: a new approach to value, markets co-created by government, capable public organisations, finance driven by needs, predistribution as well as redistribution, partnerships between government and business around shared goals, and new forms of public participation.

## From the book to Brussels and Madrid

The policy version came first. In February 2018 the Commission published Mazzucato's report *Mission-oriented research & innovation in the European Union*, written at Moedas's invitation for the next framework programme. It sets five criteria for a mission. It must be bold and inspirational, relevant to a large part of Europe's population. It must have a clear direction, with a target that is binary, as clear as whether a man reached the Moon and came back, or quantified, and a fixed timeframe. It must be ambitious but realistic. It must cut across disciplines, sectors and types of actor. And it must allow multiple bottom-up solutions, some of which will fail along the way.

The report offered three teaching examples: 100 carbon-neutral European cities by 2030, a plastic-free ocean with 90% less plastic entering the sea, and halving the human burden of dementia by 2030. It says industrial strategy should pick problems and let them guide innovation across many actors and sectors. It also admits something about Apollo that critics like to raise: many of its spin-offs, such as the integrated circuit, would have arisen even without the Moon landing. The cities idea became one of the five missions of Horizon Europe, the research programme for 2021–2027, with a target of 100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030; our day-29 piece gives the Commission's mid-term figures.

Spain's version is the PERTE, the strategic projects of the recovery plan. The government's España Digital portal describes them as a new instrument of public-private collaboration and counts 11 approved, mobilising more than €30 billion of public investment. The list runs from automotive, advanced health and renewables to green hydrogen, agri-food, the circular economy, naval and aerospace industries, the water cycle, the care economy, the Spanish language economy, and microelectronics and semiconductors. Most of those are named after sectors. Measured against Mazzucato's own criteria, few of them state a single target with a date that a citizen could check.

## The critics

The sharpest criticism comes from the economist John Kay, whose review Alberto Mingardi summarised for Econlib. Apollo, Kay argues, succeeded because its objective was specific and limited, the basic science was understood and political commitment was strong. Nixon's war on cancer, explicitly modelled on Apollo, failed because cancer is many illnesses. And political direction of innovation tends to bring grandiose ambition, an absence of honest feedback and the suppression of sceptical voices. That is James C. Scott's warning in [Seeing Like a State](/en/articles/james-c-scott-seeing-like-a-state-explained), applied to research budgets.

Robeyns pushes from the other side. She thinks the book stops short, because problems rooted in large inequalities of power, such as the hold of fossil-fuel interests, will not yield to a consensus around a mission, and governments themselves can be captured.

The 2018 report contains a weak point both critics would recognise. It says that even if a mission misses its milestones or its objective, it might still count as a success because of its wider effects. That sentence lets every mission declare victory.

## Where we land

Radical centrism keeps Mazzucato's ambition. The left is right that the state can be an investor that takes risks on goals markets will not set, such as clean cities or fewer people living with dementia, and that the public should share in the returns when a bet pays off, through equity, royalties or repayable grants. The liberal market tradition, from Hayek to Scott, is right that nobody in a ministry knows the best route in advance, so routes have to compete and failing projects have to lose their money fast.

The piece that belongs to neither camp is to treat each mission as a public contract. Take Mazzucato's second criterion seriously: a binary or numerical target with a date. Fund many routes through open, competitive calls. Publish a scoreboard of results against the target. Write the stop rule and the sunset date in on day one, and record a missed target as a miss. Delivery is where this succeeds or fails, which is why [Jennifer Pahlka](/en/articles/jennifer-pahlka-recoding-america-explained) belongs beside Mazzucato on any shelf.

For Spain that means rewriting each PERTE as a problem with a number and a deadline, a cut in industrial emissions or in waiting times for a diagnosis, and letting firms, universities and regions compete to meet it.

## FAQ

### What is a mission economy?

It is Mariana Mazzucato's name for an economy in which governments set ambitious public goals, such as carbon-neutral cities or halving the burden of dementia, and organise public investment, procurement and partnerships with business around them. The model is the Apollo programme, which set one clear goal and a deadline and drew in many sectors to reach it.

### What is mission-oriented policy?

It is industrial and innovation policy organised around problems instead of sectors. Mazzucato's 2018 report for the European Commission says a mission should be bold and relevant to society, have a measurable target and a deadline, be ambitious but realistic, involve many disciplines and sectors, and be open to multiple bottom-up solutions.

### What are the main criticisms of Mission Economy?

The economist John Kay argues that Apollo succeeded because its objective was specific, its science well understood and its political backing strong, and that most social problems lack those conditions; Nixon's war on cancer, modelled on Apollo, failed. From the left, the philosopher Ingrid Robeyns doubts that consensus around a mission can overcome entrenched economic power.

### Are EU missions based on Mazzucato's work?

Yes. Commissioner Carlos Moedas invited her to draw up recommendations for the next research framework programme, and her February 2018 report proposed mission criteria and examples, including 100 carbon-neutral cities by 2030. Horizon Europe, the EU research programme for 2021–2027, now runs five missions, among them one to deliver 100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030.

## Sources

- [Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/315191), Penguin Books (2022)
- [Mission-oriented research & innovation in the European Union: a problem-solving approach to fuel innovation-led growth (full text)](https://www.era.gv.at/public/documents/3483/mazzucato_report_2018.pdf), European Commission (hosted by ERA Portal Austria) (2018)
- [EU Missions in Horizon Europe](https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/eu-missions-horizon-europe_en), European Commission (2026)
- [Book Chat: Mariana Mazzucato – Mission Economy](https://crookedtimber.org/?p=48950), Crooked Timber (Ingrid Robeyns) (2021)
- [John Kay on Mazzucato's Mission Economy](https://www.econlib.org/?p=53743), Econlib (Alberto Mingardi) (2021)
- [PERTE: Proyectos Estratégicos para la Recuperación y Transformación Económica](https://espanadigital.gob.es/medida/perte-proyectos-estrategicos-para-la-recuperacion-y-transformacion-economica), Gobierno de España, España Digital (2025)