ABSTRACT
Mazzucato contends that ‘[n]ot only has government funded the riskiest research, whether applied or basic, but it has indeed often been the source of the most radical, path-breaking types of innovation’ (Mazzucato 2011). She claims that ‘often public sector funding ends up doing much more than fixing market failures . . . It leads the growth process rather than just incentivising or stabilising it’. In applying this to the biotech industry in the US, Mazzucato shows that, on the one hand, the knowledge base, which biopharmaceutical companies are dependent on, has developed, to a greater extent, from government investment than from business. She also shows that this investment complemented venture capital and public equity funds, which hand been poured into the industry. This conclusion seems particularly pertinent for, and transferable to, the accessible technology market, which needs a more complex action that goes beyond simply funding basic research and setting regulations. This finding is even more obvious, with regards to UD, given that only supply-side and demand-side incentives provided through public policy might overcome compounding high cost factors (Bauer and Elsaesser 2012).
