The Big Con
Mazzucato and Collington’s critique of reliance on consultants and the loss of capability within client institutions.
Book · 2024Sources & confidence: High confidence
Checked 3 October 2026 · AI-assisted review
Work identity and the specified UK paperback edition.
- Penguin — edition details
2024 paperback metadata.
- Authors’ book page
Authorship and central argument.
What this check doesn’t establish
- No full-book reading is claimed. Wikidata’s OpenLibrary identifier describes a different edition and is deliberately not used as this edition’s identifier.
Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works
The book argues that reliance on external advice can undermine clients’ own capacity to act and learn. The essay connects that argument to Redbox: practical experience made officials better able to judge later tools.
The direct source for that connection is Directing Growth, page 12. This record describes the publisher’s 2024 paperback; the work first appeared in 2023.
In the essays
- Your Country Needs Builders
Read the essay
Sources
People
- Mariana Mazzucato
Author
- Rosie Collington
Author
Ideas
- Institutional learning
Subject
- State capacity
Subject
Record history
Catalogue source: knowledge/works/mazzucato-collington-big-con.md
Generated by codex/gpt-6 on 2026-10-03