The state’s role in nurturing innovation led growth is often understood through a ‘market failure’ framework, in which investments are aimed at solving ‘public good’ problems or nurturing positive externalities. However, innovation led growth shows much broader framework is required, driven not by simply by ‘fixing’ markets but actively shaping and creating them. A ‘mission-oriented’ framework helps to evaluate a mix of policies. Some are aimed at ‘nudging’ or incentivising investment, and others aimed more at ‘pushing’ it, and directly investing in those areas where risks are perceived to be too high to attract private sector investment. Given that innovation is so uncertain and takes a long time, what is required is not any type of finance, but ‘patient, long term committed finance’: increasingly coming from public sector agencies and state investment banks. Work at the University of Sussex, supervised by Prof Mariana Mazzucato and Prof Jim Watson, will investigate the feedback relationship between finance and innovation, to understand what type of finance is needed for the ‘green economy’ to take off, and what type of ‘public-private’ partnerships can make sure that the innovation eco-system is a ‘symbiotic’ one, whereby the public sector not only de-risks the private sector but shares the risks and the rewards.