10policy failure have been documented in this book. At the same time, efforts in the European Union continue to gain momentum as the EU Green Deal is rolled out across member states. Another reason why The Entrepreneurial State has been so popular is its compatibility with established interest groups. As observed in several contributions in this book, support structures, platforms for private-public cooperation, and large volumes of technology-specific money usually end up in the hands of established interest groups. Hence, they are not very likely to question these policies but will rather go along with the ride. As noted by Potts et al. (2016), innovation policy can be classified either as giving various forms of support or as policies aimed toward removing barriers and removing destructive vested interests. The political economy of these two alternatives looks very different. Giving support does not result in any enemies. The cost of support programs is distributed across the wider collective of taxpayers; potential benefits are concentrated for a few actors. Conversely, policies aimed at dealing with resistance are politically less popular. Dealing with opposition to innovation in the form of incumbent oligopolies, regulations, or institutional obstacles is associated with considerable political costs. While the long-term benefits of doing so may be large, such benefits are less visible and distributed over many actors and over time. We therefore conclude that the entrepreneurial state has become so popular because it seems to cater to established interest groups in society: politicians and government administrations are heralded as entrepreneurial and innovative while big incumbent firms are often sheltered from competition via large collaboration schemes.

3

Innovation Policy, Inverted

As exemplified in several chapters of this book, due to forces of interest groups and political logic, innovation policy tends to become a matter of providing selective support instead of constructively dealing with resistance to innovation. We acknowledge that it is politically difficult to enact policies that deal with powerful interest groups. Yet, there is nevertheless a need to invert innovation policy. Innovation