In this video interview, economist Mariana Mazzucatto explains her view on the role of government and public policy in shaping economy and society. Her talk links to the themes tackled in this course in several ways. First, she addresses the need for governmental decision making – not just in crisis – to be strategic and driven by missions. This is the opposite of garbage-can-like, short-term oriented decision making dominating in crisis situations as discussed in lecture 1.  Second, she clearly argues that policy makers need to think about societal grand challenges and the UN SDGs as interrelated, a point made in class 12. This also means that policy makers need to move beyond departmental silos – the dominant way of how (see class 3) public bureaucracies are organized – towards interconnected decision making, most importantly regarding public investment decisions as well as public procurement. As discussed in lecture 10, basing public procurement decisions on the basis of fair trade and environmental standards is one important mechanism of organizing our global economy towards sustainability.