Narrator: What if the greatest challenges of our time—climate change, disease, inequality—are not problems we lack the technology to solve, but crises we lack the collective will to confront? In 1962, President John F. Kennedy declared that America would go to the moon. It was an audacious, almost absurd goal. The necessary technology didn't exist. The organizational capacity was unproven. Yet, less than a decade later, Neil Armstrong took that one small step. Today, we face problems far more complex than a lunar landing, but our response is often timid, fragmented, and reactive. We tinker at the edges of systems that are fundamentally broken. Why did we lose the ambition that took us to the moon? And what would it take to get it back?

In her groundbreaking book, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, economist Mariana Mazzucato argues that the answer lies in a profound misunderstanding of the very engine of progress. She contends that we have been telling ourselves the wrong story about the roles of government and business, leading to a crisis of capitalism that paralyzes our ability to solve big problems. The book is a blueprint for rediscovering the "moonshot" approach and applying it to the urgent missions we face here on Earth.

Narrator: Before we can aim for the moon, Mazzucato argues, we must first understand why we are stuck on the ground. The book paints a stark picture of modern capitalism as a system plagued by four deep-seated dysfunctions.

First, finance is no longer in service of the real economy. Instead, it has become self-referential. The financial sector is primarily busy funding other financial activities, insurance, and real estate—a cycle known as FIRE. This creates speculative bubbles and extracts value, rather than creating it by funding the long-term, patient investment needed for real innovation.

Second, this short-term focus has infected the business world. Corporations are increasingly managed not for long-term growth or innovation, but for quarterly returns and rising stock prices. This pressure leads to massive spending on share buybacks to boost stock value, while investment in research, development, and employee skills stagnates. It’s a model that rewards executives and shareholders in the short run but starves the economy of future growth.

Third, while finance and business look inward, the planet is burning. The climate emergency is a direct consequence of an economic model that has failed to price in the catastrophic cost of carbon-intensive industries. Finally, and perhaps most critically, governments have accepted a diminished role. They have bought into an ideology that says their only job is to get out of the way and, at most, step in to fix "market failures." This leaves them tinkering at the margins, reacting to crises rather than proactively shaping a better future. The result is a system that is failing to address our most existential threats because its core components are all pointing in the wrong direction.

Narrator: According to Mazzucato, our inaction is not just a matter of policy; it's a matter of ideology. Our economic and political systems are hobbled by a set of powerful myths about the role of the state, which prevent us from undertaking ambitious missions.

The first myth is that business creates value while the government just facilitates it or, at best, de-risks it. Mazzucato dismantles this by showing that many of the most revolutionary technologies of our time—from the internet and GPS to touchscreens and the algorithms behind Google—were born from high-risk, government-funded research. The private sector often enters the picture only after the state has made the initial, uncertain, and expensive investments.

The second myth is that the government's purpose is simply to fix market failures. This casts the state in a passive, reactive role. In contrast, the Apollo program wasn't about fixing a broken market for space travel; it was about creating a new one. A mission-oriented government doesn't just level the playing field; it tilts the field toward a specific, ambitious goal.

Other myths include the dangerous idea that government should be run like a business, which ignores the state's unique capacity to pursue public purpose over profit; the fallacy that outsourcing public services always saves money, when it often leads to lower quality and a loss of crucial internal capabilities; and the belief that governments "shouldn't pick winners." Mazzucato argues that governments have always picked winners—the question is whether they do so strategically to foster innovation or accidentally by propping up incumbents. These myths, she insists, create a self-fulfilling prophecy of an incompetent state, preventing it from building the very capacity it needs to succeed.

Narrator: To see what a mission-oriented economy looks like in practice, Mazzucato points to the ultimate example: the Apollo program. Getting to the moon was not just an engineering challenge; it was an economic and organizational one. NASA didn't just write checks; it acted as a systems integrator, cultivating a dynamic ecosystem of innovation across public and private sectors.

The success of Apollo rested on several key pillars. It began with a clear, ambitious, and inspiring vision. The goal was not vague; it was to put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade. This clarity mobilized the nation. It required immense risk-taking, with the government willing to invest in unproven technologies and absorb the costs of failure. This spirit is echoed in the modern story of SpaceX. When Elon Musk set out to revolutionize space travel, the first three launches of the Falcon 1 rocket failed, pushing the company to the brink of bankruptcy. Yet, like the government with Apollo, Musk persisted, viewing failure as a necessary part of innovation.

Apollo also fostered collaboration on an unprecedented scale, involving over 400,000 people and 20,000 private firms and universities. Crucially, NASA structured its contracts not as simple outsourcing agreements but as dynamic partnerships. They demanded innovation from their private partners and built in clauses to ensure that the public shared in the rewards of success. This dynamic public-private partnership, where the state sets the direction and catalyzes innovation, stands in stark contrast to the passive, market-fixing role governments are told to play today.

Narrator: The lessons from Apollo are not just historical curiosities; they are directly applicable to the grand challenges of the 21st century. Mazzucato argues for applying the same mission-oriented thinking to what she calls "Earthshots"—ambitious goals for solving problems like climate change, public health crises, and the digital divide.

This requires reframing problems as missions. For example, instead of a vague goal like achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goal for "Life Below Water," a mission-oriented approach would set a concrete target, such as "A 90% reduction in plastic entering the ocean by 2030."

Such a mission would then be broken down into specific, cross-sectoral projects. This could involve funding research into biodegradable materials, investing in new recycling infrastructure, creating policies to ban single-use plastics, and launching public campaigns to change consumer behavior. It would require collaboration between government agencies, private companies, research labs, and citizen groups, all working in concert toward the same clear objective. By setting a bold direction, the government can spur a wave of innovation across multiple sectors, just as the moonshot spurred advances in computing, materials science, and nutrition.

Narrator: To make mission-oriented policy a reality, Mazzucato concludes that we need more than just new projects; we need a new underlying theory of value and a new political economy. She proposes seven core principles to guide this transformation.

These principles include: explicitly defining and measuring collective value creation, moving beyond GDP to account for public well-being; embracing a market-shaping role for government; building dynamic capabilities within the public sector rather than outsourcing them; using outcomes-based budgeting that ties funding to the achievement of clear missions; designing policies for fair distribution of rewards so that the public benefits from the risks it takes; fostering true partnerships where risks and rewards are shared; and ensuring broad citizen participation in setting and shaping missions.

Together, these principles form the foundation for a new social contract—one where the public and private sectors work symbiotically to create an economy that is not only innovative but also inclusive and sustainable. It’s a call to fundamentally rethink the purpose of capitalism itself.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Mission Economy is a powerful and liberating idea: the state's role is not to be a timid janitor for the economy, cleaning up the messes left behind by the private sector. Its proper role is to be a bold, visionary, and risk-taking investor in our collective future. It is to set the direction, catalyze innovation, and steer the economy toward solving humanity's greatest challenges. Mazzucato's work is a direct rebuttal to the idea that ambition and government are incompatible.

The book leaves us with a profound challenge. The biggest obstacle to achieving our next moonshot is not a lack of resources or technology, but a lack of imagination, fueled by a flawed and outdated story about what government can and should do. It forces us to ask: what grand challenges are we failing to even consider, simply because we have accepted a narrative that tells us they are too big, too bold, or simply not the government's job?