This third of [three provocations] originally published on the Mission Money Models website, this paper by Hasan Bakhshi, Alan Freeman and Jason Potts proposes a fundamental shift in the role of the state with respect to innovation policy. The broadest barrier to effective entrepreneurial action that drives innovation processes, we argue, is good, timely information about relevant opportunities and constraints.
Innovation policy would work better, we suggest, if modelled on experimental science and directed to the task of minimising the uncertainty that entrepreneurs face in the discovery of opportunities and constraints. We consider what this means for the institutions of innovation policy.