Professor Mazzucato's argument is that the big three are weakening government's ability to innovate because that function is outsourced.

Although she is confident this can be remedied by bringing more innovative projects in house the reality is the same as in large companies: entrenched cultures, fiefdoms, silos, budgets make change very hard due to entrenched interests.

It takes outsiders to be the Piñata in the room at some point, they can say things FTE management can't. I'm a consultant, my beef with the big three is the 'nobody gets fired for hiring Mckinsey/Deloitte/x' syndrome.

You will get a lot of cut and paste boilerplate slide deck read outs from the big players, smaller more specialized consultants tend to provide a lot more value for much lower costs.

Ironically government departmental efforts at innovation/change/evolution are typically expensive, big players too...