Risk-taking is often the justification for the rewards investors reap, and Chapter 7 continues to look at other types of value extraction carried out in its name. Here I consider the kind of risk-taking required for radical technological innovation to occur. Innovation is without doubt one of the most risky and uncertain activities in capitalism: most attempts fail. But who takes it on? And what sort of incentives must be created? I explore the biased view of the current innovation narrative: how public-sector risk-taking is ignored, the state being seen as merely facilitating and ‘de-risking’
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