ABSTRACTDevelopment economics appears to have come full circle, as interest in and concern for industrialization have made a comeback, echoing major concerns of the early development economists. However, when it comes to the practice of industrialization strategy and industrial policy, the default recommendation is still the market and static comparative advantage — the main task of governments, in the new view, is to impose institutional reforms and improve governance so as to allow markets to perform more efficiently. History is thus about to repeat itself, but this time as farce, because no country has managed to climb the industrial ladder just by ‘getting prices and institutions right’. We have to re‐learn the old lessons of how to industrialize, learning from past mistakes and taking into account new challenges posed by today's global realities.