Mariana Mazzucato

So the other huge problem is that these consultants, when they're coming in, they often actually don't know very much and they end up really bothering consultants.

The poor public servants that they end up emailing, oh, would you mind telling me what you think about or sending me your plan that we can study?

It's like, why are you even working with government if you don't have within the consulting companies that deep expertise?

Which, you know, I'm not saying this just because I'm an academic, but I don't think academics are used enough.

If you have a research center that's been thinking about climate change for the last 40 years, use them.

Don't ask McKinsey, as Australia did, to design your climate strategy, which ended up, by the way, being terrible.

So there is a bit of why is it that governments, A, don't invest in their own capacity and capabilities, and B, when they do go out there and look for the advisors and consultants, are kind of getting the ones that simply kind of provide a

Rubber stamp, right?

That makes them feel more secure.

They haven't even done the homework to make sure they are getting the top people in the world to help advise them on doing difficult tasks.

Exactly.

So that's the myth, right, that somehow we're talking about either government does everything, right, or even nationalize everything, or it does nothing and it privatizes and brings in the consultants.

So the truth is obviously somewhere in the middle.

So, of course, you're absolutely right.

Government doesn't have to have all those skills.

It definitely needs the skills to know who to work with outside of government.

Sure.

But it also needs to even understand that kind of outside landscape to even think about what might we need, how might we start developing a strategy that reimagines, say, the trash collection process.

So that's why I talk about missions.

So when NASA wanted to go to the moon and back in a short amount of time, they didn't say, we're going to do it all by ourselves.