Meet the Visionary Venture Capitalist Who's Inspired by Marx and Keynes: Lynn Parramore interviews William Janeway

William Janeway is no ordinary businessman. In his view, waste can be good, efficiency is the enemy of innovation, and government investment builds the platform on which venture capitalists and entrepreneurs can “dance.” A Cambridge-educated economist whose career as a venture capital investor has spanned four decades, Janeway has been called a “theorist-practitioner” by the great Hyman Minsky. As an investor, he built and led the Warburg Pincus Technology Investment team that provided financial backing to some of the companies that sparked the Internet economy. 

Janeway’s new book, Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy, reveals how the state, the market economy, and financial capitalism work together to create innovative technologies. As he sees it, innovation has stalled in America, and it’s time to get it up and running again, particularly in critical areas like clean tech/green tech that can help us fight climate change. Somewhat unusual among highly successful businessman, Janeway draws lessons not from Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, but from Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. He believes that if we can break free of the fetters of neoclassical economic theory, the U.S. can lead the way in innovation and provide more of the things that make for a good life for all.

AltertNet
Meet the Visionary Venture Capitalist Who's Inspired by Marx and Keynes
Lynn Stuart Parramore