This chapter focuses on the implementation of missions. It explores how missions need purposeful policy mixes, adapting existing instruments or creating flexible, mission-specific ones to align with strategic agendas and scale new solutions. It highlights the importance of building public sector capabilities, including in foresight, systems thinking, portfolio management, collaborative leadership and reflexive monitoring. It stresses the importance of dedicated mission offices or secretariats. Finally, it discusses the need for new monitoring and evaluation approaches that go beyond accountability to capture systemic effects, learning and “double additionality”, balancing formative learning with summative proof of results.
Forging New Frontiers in Mission‑Oriented Innovation Policies
Abstract
Missions need tailor-made, flexible policy mixes that align with strategic agendas and allow for active portfolio management.
Most missions rely on **pre-existing instruments**, which often lack the flexibility needed for mission goals. There is a need to adapt them (e.g. their selection criteria, reporting procedures, eligibility scope) to better fit mission objectives.
Strategic, direct funding and mission-specific instruments are rare but will be essential for scaling solutions.
Missions demand new skills and mindsets in public administrations, such as foresight and scenario planning, systems and design thinking, portfolio and transition management, and collaborative leadership and governance.
Dedicated mission offices or secretariats are vital for co-ordinating and managing missions, training partners and promoting the mission approach, executing strategic funding, and supporting reflexive learning.
Conventional monitoring and evaluation methods are ill-suited for missions. Missions require formative and developmental evaluation focused on learning, not just accountability.
The added value of missions lies in the promise of their systemic effects. Evaluation frameworks should be able to capture these effects to assess their “double additionality”, stemming from the combination of multiple interventions and initiatives, on top of the effects of each intervention taken in isolation.
Mission theories of change and theories of action can be instrumental in capturing these effects.
Missions are now moving to the “real thing”, requiring new sets of competencies, mindsets, ways of working, and human and financial resources within the public sector (and other implementing actors). However, the closer mission practitioners get to implementation, the weaker the practical and analytical knowledge base to support them in doing so. Many missions had so far concentrated efforts on developing their strategic agendas and co-ordinating actors’ plans. Following this emphasis on the definition (framing) and governance (enlisting) of missions, the relevant literature has also devoted less attention to mission implementation.
Implementing missions involves several tasks that constitute the core of the mission’s “systemic engine”. This includes not only the implementation of a tailor-made policy mix of interventions and the selection of projects and activities in a way that is relevant to the strategic agenda, but also monitoring and reorienting them when needed to ensure they remain aligned with the challenge and its evolution. This requires new skills and practices from mission partners, not least the public authorities, but also from the mission platforms and intermediaries that support them.
This pivot stage comes at a delicate moment in many missions’ policy cycle: although they are still recent and have long-term objectives, they are already being asked to demonstrate results and are subject to evaluations. This also requires significant changes in practices, methodologies and the capabilities to use them for learning in addition to accountability.
This chapter addresses the following main questions:
What changes of instruments and incentives do missions require?
What skills, capabilities and modes of empowerment are required for delivering on missions in mission teams?
What are appropriate mission monitoring and evaluation methodologies, criteria, processes and practices?
Mobilising instruments in a purposeful policy mix
The primary changes required by the implementation of a mission-oriented innovation policy (MOIP) approach relate less to the nature of the instruments themselves and more to how they are mobilised and managed. In traditional science, technology and innovation (STI) policy landscapes, different instruments are typically managed in isolation to address individual market failures. In contrast, missions require co-ordination among these instruments, with formal linkages created for systematic information exchange and, in some cases, joint implementation. This approach is sometimes referred to as a “co-ordinated package” of policy and regulatory interventions or a “tailor-made and purposeful policy mix”, as opposed to the more fragmented and coincidental policy mix found in national innovation systems. Norway, for instance, has taken a joint implementation approach with a number of programmes, including Pilot-E, Pilot‑T and its Green Platforms. These programmes combine funding schemes from different agencies (the Research Council of Norway, Innovation Norway, Enova, Siva and Gassnova) at different stages of the innovation chain. This provides projects of industry‑led consortia a more continuous, less burdensome and quicker “journey” through the innovation stages.
Develop a more diverse policy mix that includes demand-side instruments (e.g. public procurement for innovation) and regulatory tools to create stronger market incentives for private sector participation and investment.
– Brazil’s Structuring and Mobilizing Programs, conference poster
As previously mentioned (see Chapter 2), the mission approach should be driven by clear objectives and a theory of change, outlining how partners intend to achieve those objectives. This determines the necessary combination of instruments across all relevant areas of change. As Reid, Steward and Miedzinski (2023[1]) point out, missions can serve as powerful mechanisms for consolidating and streamlining funding streams to address systemic challenges. Studies of mission cases from the OECD and other organisations show that missions tend to adopt a more holistic approach, co‑ordinating various policy instruments toward shared goals. However, these studies also show that most missions still struggle to convene all the public and private sector actors, co-ordinate budgetary resources, and integrate the policy instruments that condition the realisation of their objectives.
Tailoring and managing instruments to align with contextual needs
Establish a mechanism for revisiting rejected projects at a later stage.
– Korea’s Alchemist Program, conference poster
The tailor-made policy mix at the level of public intervention supports a portfolio of projects and activities at the level of actions. The implementation of missions should therefore include active portfolio management of projects and activities to ensure that missions are adequately addressing their theory of change. Grants for research and innovation remain a key policy instrument for channelling mission funding to project partners. However, these grants are often supplemented by a variety of other measures, such as support for specific projects, competence or excellence centres, regulatory reforms, competitions, prizes, demonstration sites, innovation “labs” and “hubs”, training, communication, and awareness-raising activities. Despite this, few missions currently include instruments to scale up and deploy the new solutions they help develop. Addressing this scale-up gap for new solutions will be essential in achieving mission goals.
In many countries, missions – like any other policy – have to use open calls for proposals and are limited in their use of direct, strategic funding. This is a major constraint, as the mission needs some margin of flexibility to commission some very specific activities in line with its theory of change. While the need for transparency and fair competition is laudable, there is a need to change the balance between competitive and strategic funding, mobilising other forms of checks and balances to ensure that the public money is both well spent and closely in line with the mission’s objectives. Under the direct authority of the Prime Minister, the French Acceleration Strategies have been granted more autonomy to use direct funding.
More flexibility could be offered to missions if they could use their own, tailor-made instruments. However, benchmarking studies on missions (Larrue, 2021[2]; OECD, 2024[3]) show that most instruments used in missions already existed prior to the mission’s creation. New, mission-specific instruments are rare. One notable exception is the Dutch Mission-Oriented Research, Development and Innovation scheme, part of the Dutch Top Sector and Mission-Driven Policy. This integrated instrument, specifically developed for MOIPs, supports multidisciplinary consortia that propose solutions combining technological and non-technological components, including activities related to commercialisation and societal acceptance (Janssen et al., 2021[4]).
In this context, missions mainly rely on adapting existing instruments. These adaptations include changes to selection criteria (e.g. incorporating “portfolio fit” criteria), more hands-on project management, broader scope for eligible expenditures and activities, centralised (multi-instrument) reporting procedures, multiannual funding frameworks, larger scale multi-partner projects, combined funding for diverse activities beyond research and development, more flexible administrative rules (to allow for risk-taking and failure), and dynamic reporting obligations (based on trust and allowing for changes in direction). As they struggle to realise their objectives, many missions find cunning and agile ways to adapt established practices to gain more flexibility. For instance, with some of the projects supported under Sweden’s Strategic Innovation Partnership (SIP) programmes, the innovation agency Vinnova ranks proposals based on traditional criteria (i.e. the business case and degree of scientific excellence), and, for those that pass this initial evaluation, non-government partnerships associated with each SIP select projects to fund that best align with their theories of change. In the United Kingdom’s UKRI Challenge Fund, calls for proposals have key performance indicators related to aspects of its missions, which applicants must show they are addressing. Czechia’s Strategy for Smart Specialisation includes a “bonus” during the assessment process for projects that are relevant to the missions, which increases their probability of getting funding.
Although essential, these institutional and managerial innovations often remain unnoticed outside each mission. This calls for more activities to promote exchanges between missions on their respective ways to “push the envelope”. A few MOIPs have established networks across missions to share best practices (e.g. Canada’s National Research Council and Czechia’s Strategy for Smart Specialisation). Internationally, few opportunities exist for mission practical learning. While innovations in mission practice are very specific to national administrative and institutional environments, they could prove instrumental for other missions for inspiration or adaptation.
Use a theory of change to identify sub-objectives under the missions, critical levers of change, key activities and which organisations are responsible for delivering these activities.
Develop fora for formal co-ordination between support instruments to ensure they are aligned and jointly contribute to the realisation of the mission’s theory of change. Some countries have mechanisms for joint implementation of programming.
Implement flexible approaches to funding to focus on projects that best fit the portfolio and encourage risk‑taking, balancing between competitive and strategic funding.
Promote exchanges between related missions (within a mission-oriented innovation policy [MOIP] and between MOIPs, internationally) on their respective practices for implementing missions.
When necessary, adapt existing instruments to ensure they are fit for purpose to deliver on the mission goals (e.g. selection criteria, reporting procedures, funding timelines, recipient eligibility and reporting obligations).
Developing the mission manager curriculum
Build in learning from experience through monthly Challenge Director meetings, peer groups, and formal and informal knowledge-sharing channels to facilitate exchange of best practices.
– The United Kingdom’s UKRI Challenge Fund, conference poster
Mission implementation challenges the capacity of public administrations to carry out these changes and to operate the missions effectively. However, the role of administrative structures and processes has been somewhat neglected in research on transformative policies. Some scholars have started to explore the role of public administrations in missions and, more broadly, in sustainability transitions (Borrás et al., 2024[5]). Civil servants may not only lack certain skills essential for running missions – such as portfolio management – but may also lack the incentives to engage with mission and transition challenges (Braams et al., 2022[6]). Similarly, (Kattel and Mazzucato, 2018[7]) link the lack of administrative capacity and dynamic capabilities within public institutions to a decline in general welfare, resilience and sustainable innovation, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Operating missions requires specific processes and practices as well as new skills, capabilities and modes of empowerment for mission teams. Among the most commonly mentioned are prospective skills (such as foresight, roadmapping and scenario building), engagement (requiring dedicated capacity within governments), systems and design thinking (including analysis of leverage points and prioritisation of focal areas), transition and portfolio management (including data management skills for mapping and visualisation, sensemaking and alignment/realignment of resources over time), collaborative leadership (leading and matchmaking across organisations and realms of influence), collaborative governance (stakeholder consultation and ecosystem management), communication (including storytelling), and reflexive monitoring (which could be supported by action research or action learning approaches).
Missions require a broad range of new skills, yet the curriculum for mission managers (including co‑ordinators, orchestrators, etc.) remains to be fully defined. The skills missions require may also change over time, so training and hiring may need to adapt accordingly. For instance, as technology-driven missions mature, mission managers/secretariats require more experience with commercialisation and navigating the regulatory environment than with technology development.
Some researchers have focused on categorising the different types of capabilities administrations need to master to conduct transitions and missions effectively. For example, (Kattel et al., 2024[8]) distinguish between three types of capabilities:
Dynamic transformative capabilities, which are specific abilities embedded in routines that enable organisations to adapt their resources, processes and skills to an evolving strategic environment. These include sense-making, connecting, seizing opportunities, shaping and learning.
Organisational routines, which refer to the set of abilities necessary to activate the resources an organisation needs to achieve its goals. These include analytical, planning, policymaking, mobilising participation, co-ordination and evaluation skills.
State capacity, which includes resources, legislation, bureaucratic structures and political autonomy.
In more recent work based on the case study of mission implementation by UKRI, (McLaren and Kattel, 2025[9]) propose three practical sets of capacities and capabilities:
Navigation and dynamic portfolio management: The ability to set goals, “carve out a route map”, combine different instruments and dynamically manage a portfolio (which includes discontinuing investment when needed).
Connection and co-ordination: The ability to strengthen legitimacy by building networks with external partners, and finding ways to work with agility within their own constrained organisational environment.
Learning and reflexivity: Capacities in performance management, evaluation and learning at multiple mission levels (from the projects to the whole MOIP initiative), and influencing and changing practices on the basis of lessons learnt.
While these categories are useful, they are often too conceptual or tautological, i.e. they define capacities not as substantive skills but as the capacity to do different tasks related to the mission principles: the capacity to frame missions, enlist actors, crowd-in and deliver on missions. However, a number of studies currently focus on mission capabilities based on case studies of mission implementation.
Strengthening organisational capabilities
Beyond capabilities and tools, missions may require even more fundamental changes. Implementing missions in an unchanged organisational and institutional environment – which is often the case – can resemble an “obstacle course”. The mission journey is filled with unforeseen regulatory and policy hurdles, misaligned frameworks, unexpected transaction costs, and diverging priorities. Therefore, it requires an entrepreneurial spirit within public organisations and proactive collaboration with other actors to actively navigate and overcome these challenges. The mission-driven innovation capacity framework developed by TNO Vector provides a concrete tool to identify where in the organisational changes are needed to better support mission-driven innovation processes. This can include the vision and focus of the organisation, its leadership, its networks and alliances, or its organisational structure and culture.1
In the run-up to the OECD Conference on “Mission Forward: Forging New Frontiers in Mission-Oriented Innovation Policies”, a workshop on “Capacity and Capability Needs of Public Administrations for Mission-oriented Innovation Policy" was held on 30 September 2024 as one out of three preparatory working groups organised by the Austrian Mission Facility.
Missions are often an additional task to the everyday work of ministries, agencies or other types of public sector organisations. Often, there are only limited resources (personnel, time) available to implement them. The complexity of policies and the mobilisation of stakeholders needed for “delivering missions” is challenging – even for well-developed administrations. The dimensions of organisational design, routines and capabilities is rarely addressed properly in most discussions – wrongly, as they constitute relevant starting points to work on challenges agencies currently face in implementing missions.
For delivering missions, the notion of dynamic capabilities is of relevance, which has been adapted from strategic management in business studies. It links organisational routines and resources and can be defined as organisational and strategic routines that enable organisations to create, evolve and recombine resources. Dynamic capabilities have a twofold character: they define the ends of organisational change processes (capabilities which enable the organisation to deliver missions) as well as the means (capabilities which enable the organisation to change its routines and acquire new strategic capabilities).
From the discussion at the workshop, it became clear that public sector organisations face an innovation challenge as they are often too rigidly organised and have too few incentives for organisational innovation. Various support structures for public sector organisations’ capacity building were mentioned. Furthermore, based on participants’ practical experience, three priorities for building up dynamic capabilities emerged from the discussion, which are listed below with some words of caution, as they emerge from the context of specific missions and public sector organisations:
Seizing: Seek a clear mandate from the top level of the organisation and the top level of other public sector organisations that should engage in the mission.
Connecting within and beyond the organisation: Start creating small niches where horizontal, problem‑oriented routines can be developed and experimented with and playfulness in instrumentation is encouraged.
Sense-making: Invest in system analysis and theories of change. System analysis should enable “zooming in” on different system levels and desired changes to them. Theories of change help work towards more impact-oriented policy portfolios.
Source: (Daimer and Lindner, 2025[10]) based on insights from the pre-conference seminar on “Capacities of Public Sector Organisations for Delivering Missions”.
In addition to capabilities, specific tools are needed to support organisations implementing missions. Over recent decades, several tools have been developed experimentally, including system innovation portfolios, visualisation and mapping tools, transdisciplinary “sandpits”, and innovation or policy labs. Nonetheless, here too, there is still a need for additional work to complement the mission implementation toolkit.
Supporting implementation with dedicated mission offices
While mission capabilities should be distributed among the different partners, they are particularly expected in dedicated “central” mission secretariats, support office and teams. Active at both the level of the MOIP initiative and individual missions, they should be strong and well-resourced to perform a variety of tasks, including:
support mission design, co-ordination and implementation
formalise and institutionalise the mission processes, across missions and over time
develop methodological and management guidelines and tools
train mission partners, explain and promote the mission approach
perform proactive and hands-on portfolio management
execute the dedicated mission funding (strategic direct activities)
build and maintain linkages to higher level strategic and governance frameworks
support learning and all reflexive activities, including monitoring and evaluation.
Reduce administrative complexity through harmonisation of agency-internal procedures and case handling systems.
– Norway’s Pilot-E, conference poster
While most missions have a dedicated office, secretariat or team, only a few have set up shared offices (e.g. Pilot-E) or multidepartmental secretariats (EU missions) gathering or under the authority of different ministries or agencies.2 Others have established networks across missions to share best practices (e.g. Canada’s National Research Council and Czechia’s Strategy for Smart Specialisation).
Leveraging transdisciplinary research to broaden the mission’s perspective
Transdisciplinary research integrates academic researchers from unrelated disciplines and non-academic participants to create new knowledge and theory, achieving a common goal. It provides many benefits that resonate strongly with the type of wicked problems missions deal with. It helps secure contextual knowledge that is unavailable to researchers, enabling them to venture into high-stakes societal problems where knowledge is uncertain and contested and add new dimensions and perspectives to traditional research approaches (OECD, 2020[11]).
Integrating social sciences and humanities in missions, together with natural science researchers and technological innovators, and in close interaction with policymakers, is particularly instrumental to strengthening the systemic dimension of missions. First, social sciences and humanities researchers are often involved in mission preparatory work, notably when undertaking system mapping, developing a theory of action and theory of change, or leading foresight exercises. Their presence as “embedded researchers” following the development and implementation of the mission can strengthen reflexive learning and maintain a critical and constructive spirit in the mission. In Sweden, some of the Impact Innovation Programmes have released a call for experts to perform this role. Furthermore, social sciences and humanities researchers can provide key complementary inputs on the societal requirements for the development and deployment of technological innovation, including knowledge on behaviours and institutions (e.g. markets and trends). In other words, social sciences and humanities researchers can help improve the “social readiness” of the solutions developed in missions 3 An example is the Net Zero Built‑in Environment Mission of the Dutch Top Sectors and Mission-Driven Policy, where social sciences and humanities researchers are mobilised to accompany the innovations with insights on the behaviours of building promoters and owners vis-à-vis new materials and processes.
Ensure mission teams are equipped with the mission-specific skills they need to succeed. Missions require a diverse skillset, including systems thinking, portfolio management, collaboration (leadership and governance) and communication (storytelling). Because these skills are not commonplace in most governments, they require formal and informal mechanisms for capacity building. These skill needs may also change over time as a mission matures.
Promote transdisciplinary research, i.e. including social sciences and humanities researchers and stakeholders, within the mission to support broader systemic change combining technological and non‑technological innovations.
Develop an entrepreneurial spirit among mission partners, including public organisations, to actively navigate and overcome challenges. Dynamic capabilities, which enable organisations to adapt and innovate, are crucial for mission success.
Seek a clear mandate from the top level of the organisation and the top level of other public sector organisations that should engage in the mission.
Create small niches, where horizontal, problem-oriented routines can be developed and experimented with, and playfulness in instrumentation is encouraged.
A wide consensus exists that traditional evaluation approaches and methods are not suitable for evaluating missions. These traditional methods overly focus on accountability, whereas missions are still in a phase where learning is critical, and their tangible results may be years away. Moreover, these approaches tend to assess individual policy instruments using simple criteria and linear logical frameworks, which are not appropriate for missions that target complex, systemic objectives.
A recent review of the literature (Rathenau Instituut, 2024[12]) reveals that most institutions still rely heavily on established monitoring and evaluation practices that are not well-suited for addressing societal challenges through missions or transitions. Even in agencies that have developed innovative approaches different from traditional programmes, monitoring and evaluation remains conventional, mainly, with little attention paid to the directional and systemic nature of missions.
While there is a growing body of research on mission evaluation in universities and public administrations, much of the discussion remains at an abstract, universal level. These principles have yet to be translated into context-specific, local practices. Current evaluation practices are still dominated by innovation paradigms focused on industrial development, economic growth and the ex post measurement of quantifiable impacts (Rohracher, Coenen and Kordas, 2022[13]).
Many of these ongoing works agree that more emphasis should be placed on holistic approaches to evaluation. The urgency and complexity of societal challenges necessitate innovative methods for scoping, monitoring and evaluating the outcomes and impacts of mission-driven policies. These could include methods like impact pathways, real-time tracing of processes and cumulative outcomes over time, or analysing how policies contribute to learning, capability building and behavioural changes.
An adequate evaluation framework for missions should be able to assess the value derived from the double additionality of a mission-oriented approach. The “first-order” additionality refers to the additional net effects of any given intervention compared to what would have occurred in the absence of public intervention. The “second-order” additionality is specific to MOIPs (see figure 5.1). It captures the additional effects relative to a counterfactual scenario that is not a “no intervention” scenario but a “traditional STI policy”. Evaluators must also consider any potential negative effects, such as increased administrative complexity or the displacement of new initiatives (Larrue, Tõnurist and Jonason, 2024[14]).
Source: Larrue, Tõnurist and Jonason (2024[14]).
Capturing this double additionality involves assessing the “systemic effects” of missions – the collective outcomes produced through joint efforts within a mission (e.g. collective development of a strategic agenda, alignment of plans toward shared objectives, bundling of instruments and portfolio management). These systemic effects are the primary rationale for adopting this policy approach, as they address challenges that traditional, less directional and less co-ordinated innovation policies cannot effectively tackle. The OECD has identified four main categories of mission systemic effects: 1) directionality effects; 2) governance effects; 3) portfolio effects; and 4) material effects. For each category, specific criteria have been developed to guide evaluation (Larrue, Tõnurist and Jonason, 2024[14]).
Identifying and assessing systemic effects requires a deep understanding of each mission’s internal processes, from design to the achievement of objectives. To track these processes, most experts recommend using theories of change, which link interventions with assumptions about cause-and-effect relationships in missions, as well as the specific contexts and preconditions for mission implementation. A theory of change helps map the expected effects of missions, serving as a foundation before conducting field assessments.
For example, the monitoring and evaluation framework for the EU mission policy, as proposed by an expert group (Karo et al., 2024[15]), begins with a theory of change analysis. This framework comprises a set of indicators, many of which are qualitative, focusing on changes in multi-level governance as a key early step in missions, a form of policy innovation. Similarly, to evaluate the added value of MOIPs in helping countries achieve their net zero targets, a recent study developed a theory of change tailored specifically to net zero missions (OECD, 2024[16]).
One of the key challenges in mission evaluation is balancing the need for both developmental and formative evaluation, which are essential for learning and adapting, with the requirement for summative evaluation to ensure accountability. Although mission literature and transformative innovation policies emphasise formative evaluation to guide ongoing development, summative evaluation remains necessary to demonstrate results. This is particularly important because missions, operating in already crowded policy landscapes, cannot wait much longer to prove their added value.
Assess the “second-order additionality” of a mission-oriented approach – the extent to which missions generate systemic effects beyond those produced by the instruments they intend to steer, co-ordinate and integrate.
Use a theory of change to map out the expected impact pathway of a mission and monitor its progress.
The theory of change should be regularly reviewed and updated to reflect changes in the mission context.
Integrate formative and developmental evaluation methods for learning together with other (summative) approaches – forming holistic monitoring, evaluation and learning strategies alongside the policy development cycle.
The OECD conducted a template-based consultation of mission practitioners. A total of 30 responses were received, representing as many MOIP initiatives. Based on these inputs, the OECD developed a series of posters, validated by the mission teams. The results of the survey were later coded by inference by the OECD to identify common themes across the key issues. The results related to delivering on missions are presented in this box.
Strengths
To deliver on co-developed strategic agendas, the responses underscore the need for effective monitoring, evaluation and learning processes (23%). Several responses detailed the need to establish new evaluation processes suitable for mission-oriented projects that focus on the approach as a whole and the collective impact of the individual projects. For instance, Denmark’s Innomissions are developing impact frameworks or theories of change for each mission partnership to help monitor the mission’s progress effectively. In addition, the responses recognise the value of strategic steering of the mission to deliver the mission agenda (17%). In practice, this entails a structured mix of clear priorities, participatory agenda-setting, defined roles and robust monitoring frameworks. The responses also focus on the role of a dedicated secretariat whose proactive support is relevant for overseeing and tracking mission work (15%). Some initiatives point to the importance of capacity development within the mission task force. Respondents consider the agile and flexible funding of missions to be a core strength (15%). Finally, the responses emphasise the importance of strong leadership from mission co‑ordinators (6%).
Weaknesses
On the other hand, the responses mention difficulties in assessing evaluation and monitoring strategies (32%). Wallonia, for instance, finds that evaluating its S3 is “not straightforward”, as the strategy relies on such a variety of instruments and stakeholders. These difficulties are primarily attributed to issues in collecting performance indicators and measuring progress, particularly for qualitative roadmaps or societal impact. The responses cite a lack of financial and/or human resources to deliver on strategic agendas (29%). In this regard, respondents point to the lack of appropriate resourcing for long-term missions at the outset of the programmes and the limited stakeholder engagement for large programmes. Next, the responses highlight how existing structures and processes have not been adapted to missions (13%). Responses also find the mission scope limited to science, technology and innovation sectors (11%), which undermines the multisectoral aspect of the mission‑oriented approach and limits the participation of other ministries to deliver in their sector. Lastly, existing mindsets pose a barrier to delivering on missions (8%). Some participants highlighted the need for cultural change to develop skills, capabilities and support mechanisms necessary for mission implementation.
Note: The top five strengths and weaknesses related to delivering missions represent, respectively, 77% of the 81 responses and 92% of the 40 responses under this pillar.
References
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[1] Reid, A., F. Steward and M. Miedzinski (2023), Aligning Smart Specialisation with Transformative Innovation Policy: Lessons for Implementing Challenge-led Missions in Smart Specialisation, Publications Office of the European Union.
[13] Rohracher, H., L. Coenen and O. Kordas (2022), “Mission incomplete: Layered practices of monitoring and evaluation in Swedish transformative innovation policy”, Science and Public Policy, Vol. 50/2, pp. 336-349, https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scac071.
← 3. The Dutch RTO TNO has developed a Social Readiness Level (SRL) index to assess how innovations are embedded in and accepted by society. It is complementary to Technology Readiness Levels. The SRLs run from SRL 1, where the problem to be tackled by the technology is identified, to SRL 9, when the solution has been proven effective in a relevant social environment. It is applied, for instance, by Innovation Fund Denmark in operating its Grand Solutions scheme. See: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/smes/ecosystem-technology-readiness-levels-are-getting-reality-check-ensure-innovations-are.