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.

Markets are not static entities that are 'intervened' in (for good or bad) but are outcomes of public and private interactions.

Once we admit that the public sector takes an immense amount of risk along the entire innovation chain, it becomes crucial to find ways to share both risks and rewards.

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.

We should be investing where the public returns are greatest - that is in innovation.

There is a lot of flesh to be put on the bones - but there is at least an opening for a more pragmatic, less ideological debate about how to build economies that work for people, within the limits of our planet.

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