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.

It's important that public funds be spent in research directions that are pushing market frontiers rather than working in existing areas. This means funding research not only on drugs but also on areas like life-style changes, even if the profit potential is lower for Big Pharma as you cannot sell that change as you can sell a medicine.

Our current model of capitalism and the dominant ideas in policy making have led to a failure of investment by both the public and the private sector in the things that drive productivity, and which affect its distribution.

Unfortunately, simplistic framing of problems leads to simplistic answers.

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

Brexit and Trump have brought the problems of capitalism into sharp relief, but both are only making things worse. Take the investment challenge - businesses invest where there they see technological or market opportunity.

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.