Ries’s idea would be a sort of intermediate step between opaque private markets and highly transparent but short-termist public markets. It would take significant regulatory changes to implement, and Wall Street firms would likely be skeptical, if not outright opposed. But it’s a big, bold, fresh idea in a country where such new approaches are few and far between.

When Silicon Valley’s capitalists and researchers at left-leaning East Coast think tanks are roughly in agreement, they may be onto something big. New Industrialism -- the idea of using regulatory, financial and tax policies to push businesses toward greater real investment -- is not yet mainstream, but it could be just the thing we need to fix the holes in our neoliberal growth policy.


Noah Smith is an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University and a freelance writer for a number of finance and business publications.

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