Mariana Mazzucato worked with Artangel on Longplayer Assembly – joining 23 other participants in a non-stop 12-hour conversation relay presented live online on 26 September 2020, marking the twentieth anniversary of Longplayer.
Mazzucato is a Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at UCL and Founding Director of UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Her work is focused on the relationship between innovation and the direction of growth, with emphasis on rethinking the public sector’s role to ensure growth is more innovation-led, inclusive and sustainable. Mazzucato works with global leaders on ‘mission oriented’ policies, which can steer solutions towards grand challenges from the battle against climate warming to building resilient health systems.
Her 2013 book, The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths, looks at the ‘investor of first resort’ role that the State has played in the history of technological change — from the Internet to biotech— and the lessons for a Green New Deal. In 2016 she co-edited the book Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth and in 2018 wrote the book, The Value of Everything: making and taking in the global economy.