Mission forward: Shaping the future through mission-oriented policy

The Mission Forward conference is a biennial event that brings the global mission community together to share best practices and common challenges.

Mission practitioners and selected leading academics from around the world will gather alongside policymakers, mission managers and project coordinators to discuss the practical dimensions of designing, governing, implementing and evaluating mission-oriented approaches.

By bringing together this diverse community of mission-oriented policy actors, the conference will reflect the full spectrum of expertise involved in the conception, delivery and assessment of missions, fostering exchange between theory, policy and practice.

The conference is designed as more than a traditional event; it is a unique gathering point for the mission-oriented policy community. By bringing together policymakers, mission managers, coordinators and academics, it will foster direct dialogue, shared learning and meaningful exchange across European and global experiences.

Through dedicated moments for interaction, the conference will prioritise human exchange and collaboration, creating a trusted space to deepen understanding, challenge assumptions and build lasting connections. In this sense, it aims to serve as a key rendezvous for the mission-oriented policy community, rather than a one-off conference.

The conference will also serve as a platform for forward-looking reflection and for shaping practical guidance to support the effective design and delivery of missions. Insights and experiences shared during the event will directly inform a dedicated report to be released in the months following the conference, ensuring that its findings are firmly grounded in real-world practice and policy needs.

The substance of the conference programme will focus on four areas, each of them reflecting current trends and challenges experienced by missions: 

1.    Missions for social well-being and competitiveness – missions are increasingly asked to deliver concrete economic impacts in terms of productivity, competitiveness and jobs – what are the economic and societal impacts of missions? How to design missions that serve competitiveness while still addressing the greatest societal challenges of our time?

2.    Scaling missions – as many missions are reaching the crucial stage of supporting the deployment of new solutions, how can the impact of missions be scaled up effectively? What governance arrangements are needed to ensure scaling is effective and sustainable?

3.    Evaluating missions’ impacts – as the pressure to deliver societal and economic impacts increases in a context of tight public resources, how to measure the added value of missions? What is the current stage of knowledge and experience on mission evaluation?

4.    Learning from missions – what lessons can be extrapolated beyond individual missions and applied across different policy levels and domains? Missions often generate spillovers (e.g., governance practices, and collaborative processes) whose influence can extend well beyond the mission arena itself. A key question is how these learnings can be consolidated, diffused, and sustained.

Dedicated sessions will be conducted to foster in-depth exchanges across the different groups.