Mission-oriented innovation systems

Abstract

Rather than merely supporting R&D and strengthening innovation systems, the focus of innovation policy is currently shifting towards addressing societal challenges by transforming socio-economic systems. A particular trend within the emerging era of transformative innovation policy is the pursuit of challenge-based innovation missions, such as achieving a 50 % circular economy by 2030. By formulating clear and ambitious societal goals, policy makers are aiming to steer the directionality and adoption of innovation. In the absence of suitable frameworks to understand and enhance the impact of missions, we introduce the notion of Mission-oriented Innovation Systems (MIS). MIS consists of networks of agents and sets of institutions that contribute to the development and diffusion of innovative solutions with the aim to define, pursue and complete a societal mission. We provide several promising research avenues, including how MIS come into existence, how they are governed and how the interactions taking place in a MIS may influence directionality and technological variety.