Profile: Professor Mariana Mazzucato

Mariana Mazzucato wants liberals to talk less about the redistribution of wealth and more about its creation. Politicians around the world are listening. Mariana Mazzucato was freezing. Outside, it was a humid late-September day in Manhattan, but inside - in a Columbia University conference space full of scientists, academics and businesspeople advising the United Nations on sustainability - the air conditioning was on full blast. For a room full of experts discussing the world's most urgent social and environmental problems, this was not just uncomfortable but off-message. Whatever their dress - suit, sari, head scarf - people looked huddled and hunkered down. At a break, Dr. Mazzucato dispatched an assistant to get the A.C. turned off.