If we look at Germany's infrastructure policy, it has been driven by its mission-oriented focus on green infrastructure. This affects both innovation and infrastructure, old industries and new. The German steel industry, for example, has adapted to the policy by lowering its material content through a 'repurpose, reuse and recycle' strategy.

Government support is not only investing in upstream areas like basic research, but also in downstream areas like applied research and early-stage financing for the companies themselves. This means there are great risks.

As a businessman, Donald Trump has been associated with some of the worst excesses of a particular style of value-extracting and asset stripping capitalism: set up businesses, let them fail, avoid paying suppliers, use bankruptcy laws to avoid taxes for decades, then set up another business somewhere else. It is this model that is the cause of many problems we see today.

Brexit and Trump's election are forcing countries to come up with new radical ideas.

People work hard and companies make big profits, but employees don't see that they share in the wealth they help to create.

If we look at the complexity of the challenges facing western societies today, we see that the problems are not really about outsiders, but have their roots much closer to home.

Shareholder value theory - the destructive idea that companies should be run solely for the benefit of shareholders - has led to financialized businesses that do not invest in the areas that will lead to future growth or the invention of useful new products.