312present and very proactive in changing the institutional system toward more free competition. Together with new technology and a favorable political zeitgeist during the 1980s and 1990s, a few resourceful actors played a key role in making the deregulation of these monopolies happen. In the planning and building sector, both technology and the zeitgeist had the potential to abolish the municipal planning monopoly. However, the lack of resourceful actors within the sectors made the change impossible. Nevertheless, many small steps were taken toward a more competitive environment in terms of both policy and industrial renewal and adoption. This highlights the fact that for iterative incumbent change to result in an overhaul of policies within a ﬁeld, resourceful entrants such as those existing in the two successful cases can help spur change. Fundamentally, the change of a centralized, politized, and ineffective monopoly sector is possible.

Our examples show the power of vested interest in public-steering, privateperforming sectors, and how private entrepreneurs can change these sectors to a system that does not involve public steering. Policy changes correlate with innovation and market expansion in these sectors (telecommunications and ﬁnance). However, in the sector where the status quo of public steering, private performing prevailed, namely the city planning and development sector, vested interests are still a dominating force and malinvestment, housing shortages, corruption, and inertia are still legion. Successful innovations are relatively rare in this sector. Through these examples, we want to emphasize that the ﬂaws in Mazzucato’s analysis—for instance, biased examples and the confusion of correlation and causation—are common. When Mazzucato uses the Apollo project as an example, she should also show the public-steering, private-performing project that had a destructive public (and private) utility. There are many more examples than those emphasized in this paper. Examples that had destructive outcomes include the Manhattan Project and the public support of eugenics. This discussion is important because the possibility of private innovation is one of the few areas in which the West can compete with China, since China has more public-steering/private-performing policies. A private innovation sector free of political and public steering is worth defending for economic reasons, but maybe even more so for the sake of human freedom and ethics.

4 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have provided three cases that partly counteract Mazzucato’s claim that public-steering and private-performing policy are advantageous for the creation of successful innovation and solving future societal challenges. Even Public-Steering and Private-Performing Sectors: Success and Failures in the. . .

313though the system of public steering and private performing has created valuable innovation, the opposite is also common. Furthermore, there is a correlation between de-monopolization and innovation in the cases of telecommunications and ﬁnance; as well as a correlation between malinvestment, stagnation, and inertia in the planning and building sector, which has long been characterized by the publicsteering and private-performing system that Mazzucato embraces.

We have also shown how processes of deregulation and de-monopolization have taken place in telecommunications and ﬁnance and what has distinguished these processes from the status quo of the planning and building sector. Our conclusion is that strong actors from within the sector are often needed for deregulation and de-monopolization. In the cases we selected, this led to positive outcomes for innovation within the sectors and thus for the economy as a whole. In telecommu-