I’ve been thinking about roles in the economy of ideas. Three roles: those that make ideas, those that consume them, but most importantly the idea middlemen.

I’m reasonably sure it was one of Paul Krugman early books that introduced me to the idea of the Policy Entrepreneur. These folks are middlemen between those who do and those who know; i.e. their suppliers are smart people who think about how we might fix a hard problem, were new oportunities are emerging, etc. etc. Their customers are the people with the resources – policical, social, capital, etc – to act on those oportunities. They are entrepenuers because they are striving to trigger big transformations; what might be called disruptive changes.

Here’s a nice example of how a frustrated policy entrepeur might spin a sentence: “it