This chapter examines how missions define goals and strategic agendas that are both ambitious and realistic, the challenges faced, and the lessons learnt and some good practices drawn from mission practitioners’ experience. It first discusses the type of challenges that are best addressed by a mission-oriented innovation policy approach and the required characteristics of “well-framed” missions. It then addresses the practical issues of how to frame missions adequately and the tools that can be used to do so.
Forging New Frontiers in Mission‑Oriented Innovation Policies
Abstract
Framing missions involves balancing tensions through an iterative consultation and negotiation process: ambitious vs. realistic, transformative vs. conservative, exploration vs. exploitation, societal vs. market-driven, narrow vs. broad, and politically grounded vs. independent.
Missions are best suited to “wicked” problems, i.e. complex, uncertain, contested challenges requiring systemic solutions across multiple domains. They are particularly useful where existing innovation systems are fragmented or lack direction, but this also makes them harder to implement.
Well-framed missions combine several features, notably an inspiring narrative and theory of change, clear but flexible goals and strategic agendas, a balanced and manageable scope, alignment with national priorities, and mechanisms for adaptability and learning.
There is no universal mission-framing process. Depending on the national and thematic institutional specificities, this process involves different mixes and sequences of top-down direction with bottom‑up participation.
Good practices of mission framing comprise testing alternative designs, engaging diverse stakeholders early, allocating time and resources for deliberation, and continuously adapting as missions evolve.
Governments have a key role to play in mission framing, acting as orchestrators, ensuring inclusivity, alignment with broader policy priorities and preventing “mission drift”.
Stakeholder co-creation, including citizens and equity-seeking groups, is crucial for legitimacy, ownership and effective delivery.
Various tools are being developed to structure missions: theories of change and action, roadmaps, foresight, system mapping, and key enabling methodologies (e.g. co-creation, behavioural insights, institutional change).
At the heart of mission-oriented innovation policies (MOIPs), governments strive to co-ordinate their respective plans and implement a consistent suite of interventions to address ambitious societal goals. These goals must be specific and well-articulated, with clear timelines and milestones. If they are formulated correctly, missions respond to a societal need, possibly by destabilising or transforming established markets and institutions while still succeeding in crowding in industrial and societal interests. Although the goals and targets often attract most of the public attention, the strategic agenda co‑constructed by the mission partners is even more important.1 Under different labels (e.g. strategy, roadmap or theory of change), these documents present the agreed-upon pathways to realise the goals. Through their goals and strategic agendas, MOIPs, and within these their missions, provide guidance to stakeholders (i.e. industry, researchers, intermediary organisations and citizens) for what directions to prioritise in their plans and investments.
MOIPs are, therefore, essentially demand- or challenge-pull policies, which makes these elements of directionality of paramount importance. They provide a focus for collective action and a “point of reference” against which progress and difficulties can be tracked at any moment of the mission life cycle.
However, developing goals and strategic agendas involves resolving several trade-offs and dealing with multiple tensions:
Ambitious vs. realistic missions: Missions must find the right balance of where to set the bar – not too low and not too high. Setting the bar too low will drastically reduce the whole additionality of the mission approach (what it can deliver that a more traditional STI policy cannot) and trigger opportunistic behaviours from beneficiaries. Setting the bar too high will result in an “empty shell”, as the risks and difficulties would deter commitment from the main actors able to contribute significantly. Despite this trend, the debate between “mission pragmatics” and “mission hard-liners” is still very much alive and the issue of how to find the right balance between ambition and realism continues to be debated.
Transformative vs. conservative missions: The level of novelty and transformative potential of the missions might also need to be balanced with the need to take on board established actors and take advantage of some existing institutions to move forward.
Exploration vs. exploitation missions: The intensity of the directionality must itself be carefully handled. Sufficient margin for manoeuvre and “solution neutrality” must be preserved to allow exploration while providing a clear indication as to where to focus efforts.
Societal vs. market-based missions: Goals must be driven by societal imperatives – most often conveyed by public authorities – but also by market prospects. These two priorities are, in many cases, not entirely consistent and may involve tough public-private negotiations.
Narrow vs. broad missions: The scope of the goals and strategic agenda is also a matter of continuous debate. If they are too narrow, they might lose their convening power as they exclude many actors that are essential to resolving the problem. If they are too broad, they lose their focus and run the risk of mission dilution, aggregating the diverging interests of too many actors.
Politically grounded vs independent missions: Missions’ orientations should be backed by and linked to high-level political agendas while still preserving the independence that shields them from electoral cycles and shifts.
This chapter aims to provide guidelines to navigate these mission conundrums. It is structured around the following questions:
What challenges are best addressed by an MOIP approach?
What are the characteristics of “well-framed” missions?
How can missions be framed well?
What tools are used to frame missions?
While the choice of a policy approach for a given objective is often determined by a number of administrative contingencies and political interests, adopting an MOIP approach should involve weighing its expected added value and costs. This depends notably on the features of the challenges at stake and of the established policy landscape relevant to this challenge.
Taking into account the features of the challenges to be tackled
In principle, all challenge areas (e.g. environmental, social, educational) can lend themselves to a mission approach. Exceptions are horizontal problems related to framework conditions (e.g. “strengthening the research system”) and purely economic-oriented objectives, which are generally not considered to be suitable for missions.
However, not all societal challenges necessitate an MOIP approach. Missions involve significant transaction costs, which need to be compared to the expected added value of an MOIP approach. In general, MOIPs are considered necessary to address wicked problems (i.e. problems characterised by a high level of complexity, uncertainty and contestability) for which traditional policy frameworks have shown to be ineffective. These problem features call for a wider systemic approach that brings together different public and private sector stakeholders under a common action framework, with their respective knowledge, capabilities and resources. At the same time, wicked problems require collective action and make it more difficult to implement collective action (for instance to converge toward shared goals), which makes a mission approach all the more necessary.
The wickedness of the challenge area is partly related to the systemic nature of the potential solutions. While the development of individual technological solutions can lend itself to challenge-based “Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency‑type” missions (see Annex F), the mission approach is considered most suited for challenges that require a combination of several innovations (social, technological, institutional, organisational, behavioural) and a multiplicity of concurrent or well-sequenced changes in different dimensions (e.g. knowledge, products, skills, infrastructure). As a systemic policy, the mission approach is particularly suitable for the development of systems of innovation (e.g. “a clean hydrogen economy/society”) rather than the development of an individual innovation technology (e.g. a new fuel cell), regardless of the potential breakthrough it represents. In the case of an individual innovation technology, a “high-risk, high‑reward” programme aiming to address a specific technological bottleneck could be more suitable than a mission approach.2
Finally, some argue that the ultimate mission adequacy criterion is the ability to mobilise interest, actors and institutions that provide legitimacy for a mission. While these elements are intrinsically linked to the characteristics of the mission (e.g. its scope, level of ambition, controversial nature), the challenge being addressed must be inspiring and matter to society. A mission needs to build on a certain level of political and governmental legitimacy and societal consensus on the importance of the challenge, if not on the solution to resolve it. This does not mean that missions should avoid targeting controversial challenges, as this would go against their transformative ambitions. It rather highlights the importance of the preparatory stage, involving careful mapping of stakeholders’ beliefs and interests, including those of “adversaries”, and a painstaking process of persuasion and “enlisting” (see Chapter 3).
The strengthening of the evidence base supporting the mission narrative is also essential to tackle potential contestation points and achieve convergence to legitimise the mission. These include, for instance, providing hard evidence and factual knowledge regarding the directionality, collectively formulating visions of the long-term policy goals, and forming advocacy coalitions that allow these actors to tackle possible contestation points (Homans, Geurts and Wesseling, under review).
However, regardless of the level of the evidence and efforts put into the negotiation, the degree of importance, or even urgency, of the challenge can still be contested, or at least debated between actors pertaining to different policy areas and sectors. The political legitimacy of a challenge should therefore also be shaped and strengthened during this crucial phase of mission preparation.
In this perspective, one could even go further, claiming that one additional condition for choosing a mission approach is the capacity of the mission partners to “embrace conflict”, recognising that societal problems will often involve dissensus caused by the diverging value orientations of different social and political groups, different interests, etc. This capacity should be built into the mission, as any overall consensus might be provisional and subject to renegotiation. In short, the contestability of the targeted challenges and the resulting dynamics of convergence and divergence should be acknowledged as part of the mission process rather than being hidden, and mechanisms should be established to address them.3
Taking into account the characteristics of the policy landscape
The characteristics of the policy landscape in which MOIPs are to be embedded also matter. A mission approach is more likely to be needed in innovation and production systems characterised by a high level of:
neutrality (i.e. where interventions are bottom-up, without strong priorities and strategic guidance)
fragmentation (i.e. with strong disciplinary, sectoral and policy silos).
This is also the context in which it will be the most difficult to implement missions since they build on – or at least have to do with – existing strategic, budgetary and co-ordination structures, arrangements and policy mixes: what calls for a mission approach is also by the same token what makes their implementation difficult. This calls for a thorough and frank assessment of the capacity of the underpinning system in terms of directionality, co-ordination and integration.
In the end, these arguments plead to reverse the question of the challenges that are best addressed by an MOIP approach. One should not start with a plan to “do missions” then select the appropriate challenges. A mission is a tool, not a goal. Defining and prioritising wicked issues and complex challenges should be the outcome of political and societal processes. Once this choice is made, policymakers must decide which is the most effective policy approach to address each chosen challenge. MOIPs are one (very special) option. Experience shows that this has not always been the case: in addition to some genuine politically and socially embedded missions, the “mission policy fad” has also generated some quite technocratic missions (missions led and defined by bureaucracies) of questionable added value.
Ex ante criteria or “signals” where a mission-oriented innovation policy approach can be worthwhile and most suited to act as a catalyst to mobilise and co-ordinate action are to address challenges that:
are complex, uncertain and contested
have a systemic nature that requires “joined up” and well-sequenced actions to address
address challenges that matter to society and can motivate the relevant actors.
A mission will be particularly needed – but also more difficult to implement – in a science, technology and innovation system characterised by non-directionality and fragmentation.
A compelling theory of change and narrative to underpin the mission
Missions benchmarking and case studies at the OECD and elsewhere have revealed the vast diversity of mission framings and formulation, even when addressing the same challenge.4 Missions’ framings differ notably according to their level of ambition (balancing between boldness and realism) and their scope (balancing between the ability to reap the benefits of systemic effects and to manage a large mission).
There are a variety of proposals for how to frame missions. The seminal mission requirements set by (Mazzucato, 2018[1]) are very often quoted, which focus on five criteria: 1) be bold, inspirational with wide societal relevance; 2) set a clear direction – targeted, measurable and time-bound; 3) be ambitious but realistic; 4) encourage cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral and cross-actor innovation; and 5) involve multiple, bottom‑up solutions (SMART, bold, etc.) (Mazzucato, 2019[2]).
These criteria serve as a good starting point for mission framing, but they represent an ideal that is challenging to achieve. The aforementioned study on “missions for net zero” revealed that less than 40% of the identified net zero missions have established concrete and measurable targets. In clear contrast with the “mission theory”, many missions are characterised by traditional – sometimes lengthy – descriptions of the objectives, blended in elements of context (OECD, 2024[3]). The practice of mission framing tends to show that an ambitious and relevant strategic agenda may be more adequate at the start of the MOIP process than narrow SMART quantitative and time-bound targets. Some mission practitioners also emphasised that defining measurable targets can be very time- and effort-consuming, translating into protracted discussions and debates (for instance, for setting targets that define what is a “net zero city” and enable monitoring progress). In these cases, agreed-upon objectives and imperfect targets can be sufficient to build consensus and begin building the mission’s strategic agenda to set concrete directions.
In principle, strategic agendas should not be lengthy and wordy descriptions of the areas and various options but be rooted in theories of change. Starting from the problems the mission tackles and its desired goals, the theory of change should reveal the expected causal relationships along the chain of impact, working backwards to identify expected impacts, outcomes, outputs and inputs (Janssen et al., 2021[4]).
At their core, mission-oriented policies have mission statements, which clearly define the overarching policy objective that steers all mission actors and activities towards addressing a systemic societal challenge within a common time frame (see Box 2.5).
To provide sufficient directionality regarding a mission, governments cannot stop at just developing these statements. Missions require strategic agendas that outline how governments plan to achieve the overarching objective, present the various sub-objectives (which in their summation will result in achieving the mission) and concrete targets (quantitative and qualitative indicators) that can be used to track progress towards the objective and sub-objectives, and who is responsible for what intervention. These strategic agendas can take different forms:
Logical framework (or Logframe): A planning tool consisting of a matrix which provides an overview of an intervention’s objectives, inputs, outcomes and anticipated results.
Theories of change: A model that explains how the desired impact is expected to be achieved, including the underlying assumptions and beliefs on causal relationships. Usually designed backwards from the impacts, it follows step-by-step the result chains that link the sequence of changes that need to happen at different levels and time frames. Theories of change deal with the substance of change.
Theories of action: An inward-looking, process-oriented tool that serves as the “delivery model for a theory of change”, mapping the causal connections between how a mission is designed and governed and the systemic effects it is intended to produce. Theories of action deal with the process of change. It can be seen as the “engine” of the theory of change.
Roadmaps: A plan that outlines a timeline for when activities will take place, the proposed milestones and project phases.
In short, theories of change explain why different interventions are being undertaken in relation to the mission objectives. Theories of action outline who is responsible for aspects of the theory of change and how the theory of change will be implemented using various interventions and levers. Roadmaps present when these interventions will occur. Missions benefit from developing each of these plans to provide direction and track progress towards their objectives. Ideally, missions first analyse the system around the mission (e.g. through canvassing stakeholders, back casting, systems reviews and maps). Based on the contextualisation, the team can start backwards from the objectives to form the theory of change, which is generally presented as a visual diagram. At the same time, policymakers must also be flexible and reflexive, approaching these plans as evergreen documents and adapting them as new knowledge emerges.
In practice, many countries combine these different types of strategic agendas, including all these elements together in one visual or strategic document. These documents may also include systems mapping, portfolio management, stakeholder mapping and effect logics, depending on the mission and the information they have available. The important elements to capture are the ultimate goal, the intermediate outcomes, the causal links between different types of changes and a discussion of assumptions behind these relationships.
Source: OECD (2024[3]).
The sequence of causality underpinning the mission theory of change should not result in a “static” and “cold” logical document. First, the use of theories of change will likely be impeded by the elements of experimentation, the actors’ dynamics and the contextual changes. Against this backdrop, the logic models underlying the missions need to be revisited regularly and have some flexibility in terms of what solutions might lead to a desired outcome. Second, before guiding stakeholders, the mission goals and strategies must attract them. Storytelling is therefore also crucial for inspiring stakeholders and building momentum. In the UKRI Challenge Fund, some Challenges hired journalists to help convey their messages to reach the target audiences. Developing a narrative is essential early in the process to foster deeper engagement when framing the mission, then tailoring the mission to a narrative that encourages stakeholders to contribute to its goals. Notably, this requires a blend of technological and societal values.5
We are a storytelling species, sharing things around a fire. Our brains are meant to engage with stories. You can’t win hearts and minds with data alone!
Mission manager
The OECD Mission Action Lab has developed a tool to help deal with the question of when a mission approach is an appropriate policy response for a specific problem to be tackled. The tool consists of four steps, each composed of questions to be reflected upon collectively by policymakers and their partners early on.
Step 1: Challenge – Defining the scope of the problem. The first step consists of assessing the nature of the challenge to be tackled to determine whether the issue is of sufficient scale and complexity to warrant a mission‑oriented approach.
Systemic: Is it multi-faceted, cross-sectoral or cross-governmental?
Compelling: Does it have consequential and meaningful impacts on citizens or on the planet, or both?
Complex: Is there a high degree of uncertainty, and are current approaches inadequate to address it?
Within the remit of mission partners: Is it connected to your mandate, authority or jurisdiction?
Step 2: Support – Assessing the stakeholder landscape. The second step consists of assessing the level of support for addressing the targeted challenge:
Championing stakeholders: Are key stakeholders across relevant sectors committed to addressing this challenge?
Adequate resources: Is there a willingness to dedicate the necessary resources?
Political backing: Does the support to address this challenge extend beyond one party or political cycle?
Step 3: Objective – Crafting an inspiring goal. The third step consists of assessing the ability to formulate an overarching objective that captures the essence of the challenge and meets the definition of a mission:
Specific: Can you identify a concrete outcome that can galvanise and channel collective action?
Bold yet realistic: Can you set an objective that is both aspirational and achievable?
Measurable: Is it possible to track progress and determine if and when the objective has been reached?
Time-bound: Can you commit to a defined time frame to ensure urgency?
Step 4: Commitment – Securing resources and policy tools. The fourth step consists of assessing the mission partners’ operational capacity and policy levers to drive the mission forward.
A dedicated operational team: Can a core team be empowered to co-ordinate and lead implementation?
Allocated funding: Can the mission partners secure funding for innovation and adoption activities?
Key policy instruments: Do the mission partners have access to the necessary policy instruments, such as regulatory or fiscal policy tools?
The OECD uses this tool to engage with missions at an early stage of development, not as a simple “pass or fail” but rather as a diagnostic tool to guide mission development. A majority of “nos” to the sequential questions above should not necessarily lead to ruling out the mission approach. It should instead be taken as a prompt to collectively reframe the challenge, strengthen partnerships and evidence to build broader backing, refine the objectives to make them more achievable while maintaining impact, and enhance commitment.
Source: Jonason D. et al. (2024[5]).
A balanced and evolutive mission scope
The call for “ambitious” and “bold” missions can also be misleading. It frequently entails mission formulation processes that confuse ambition with comprehensiveness. Missions that are too broad in their scope run the risk of becoming overly complex, unspecific and unmanageable. It is therefore essential to ensure that ambition is understood as striving for effective and transformative change. This, in turn, requires manageable missions that define their focus and target selected aspects within the broader context of a given societal challenge. At the same time, missions must not be too narrow and allow for alternate pathways to realise their visions. Reaping the benefits of systemic effects demands a certain breadth.
After several years of implementation, a certain shift towards a more pragmatic definition of mission objectives and designs can be observed. Beside the issue of manageability, missions that are too broad and ambitious risk deterring potential partners’ commitment and engagement. Although sometimes criticised for their lack of ambition, missions that focus on a narrower problem might achieve more in the end than the bold transformative ones because they are more achievable. Therefore, some authors recommend unpacking large transition-wide challenges into several sub-problems, possibly under a broader umbrella to manage the interfaces between them.6 This trend highlights the key distinction between transitions and missions: a transition is a phenomenon of broad system change; a mission is a tool that can contribute to certain components of a transition, but will, in most cases, be of a narrower scope to be actionable.
A mission well-aligned with national priorities
Missions do not exist in silos but rather alongside other national priorities. To avoid redundancies, and increase their legitimacy and impact, many MOIPs are aligned with broader strategies, for instance national STI or industrial strategies: Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland’s (henceforth Research Ireland) Challenge Programmes are rooted in its Innovation Strategy (Impact 2030). Norway’s national missions are in its Long-term Plan for Research and Higher Education 2023-2032 while the United Kingdom’s Grand Challenges and Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund were developed as part of its 2017-2021 Industrial Policy (and its 2025 Modern Industrial Strategy includes a new set of missions). The processes for establishing priorities under these broader strategies may also inform the mission design, leveraging the profile of this engagement across the innovation system. In the case of the United Kingdom’s 2017 Industrial Policy, the government created sector deals (partnerships between government and industry) to identify sector-specific interventions related to supporting productivity, employment, innovation and skills. These sector deals were also used to build buy-in from relevant businesses in addressing societal challenges, inform the design of overarching missions under its Grand Challenges, and gather co-investment commitments towards more targeted challenges through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.
Missions may also complement broader net zero policies, whose 2030 and 2050 Nationally Determined Contributions may be too nebulous alone to provide sufficient direction to innovators. Many of these overarching net zero policies do not have their own budgets, governance or mechanisms for engaging with society. In addition, some governments have created more granular climate and thematic strategies to reach their net zero targets (e.g. Flanders’ Energy and Climate Plan [2021-2030] and Denmark’s Green Solutions of the Future Strategy). Missions are one tool that governments can use to make these broader net zero commitments and thematic strategies more concrete. In both these cases, missions are part of broader strategies and used to provide more direction to innovators, support horizontal co-ordination across government, and increase engagement with societal actors. Given the complexity and breadth of climate action, more countries may benefit from using a mission-oriented approach to design, govern and deploy climate mitigation policies (OECD, 2025[6]).
Set the right scope for the mission, carefully balancing the pros and cons:
A broader scope allows benefiting from various mission systemic effects (synergies between components of innovation systems, exploration of various alternative solutions, support throughout the different stages of the innovation chain) and limits the risks of de facto excluding resourceful players.
A narrower scope increases the engagement and commitment of the actors who fall under this scope. It is also less complex, with possibly lower transaction costs.
Root the mission statements, goals and targets in theories of change, roadmaps and sub-objectives. These documents can provide more detailed direction on how missions will achieve their goals.
Dedicate and develop strategic policy intelligence resources feeding into mission formulation to balance scope, ambition and capacities.
Develop a compelling mission narrative that will inspire mission partners and stakeholders to take part in the framing and implementation of the mission. Missions must be inspiring in striving for effective transformative change.
Set a manageable and actionable scope. If necessary, unpack larger transition-wide challenges into several manageable sub-objectives or sub-missions.
Align missions with national priorities to avoid redundancies and increase impact.
There is no single best way to frame missions. The processes used to select the challenge(s), define the scope of the mission, and set the goals and targets heavily depend on the underpinning institutional settings and the nature of the challenge at stake.
Tailoring the mix of top-down and bottom-up processes to adapt to national and thematic specificities
The institutional setting in which the mission is embedded is deeply entrenched in the national policy culture and practices, particularly the role of the state vis-à-vis the different stakeholders (notably industry) and citizens in setting orientations, and the degree of centralisation/devolvement of powers. For instance, a “Nordic mission model” is sometimes used to denote rather bottom-up missions where the strategic agendas are defined by ecosystems (see the ecosystem-based missions in Annex F). At the other end of the spectrum, countries like Korea (the National Strategic Technology Policy), Japan (the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program) and France (France’s 2030 Acceleration Strategies) tend to use more centralised and top-down processes led by centre-of-government bodies such as the Cabinet or Prime Minister’s Office.7
However, the OECD’s first benchmarking of missions showed that the simple distinction between top-down and bottom-up processes is too simplistic. Instead, the processes unfold as a succession of (state-driven) and bottom-up (participatory) phases, gradually narrowing down the objectives through a mix of concertation and selection stages (Larrue, 2021[7]). The nature of the challenge (i.e. its level of “wickedness”, see above) also influences the framing process, requiring more or less deliberations with different sets of actors.
Taking the time to test alternative mission frames and designs
The preliminary stages of a mission are of crucial importance, before the mission is officially launched or immediately after (known as the mission definition, scoping or formulation stage). Simply replicating mission areas from other countries without tailoring them to local contexts – and neglecting critical policy process elements such as stakeholder and citizen participation or negotiation – can undermine the mission’s success from the outset.
The “Grand Challenge Committee” helps to mitigate uncertainties and enhance the accuracy of future mission forecasting. It is comprised of experts from humanities, social sciences, economics, futurology and science fiction. The committee plans and determines our missions.
– Korea’s Alchemist Program, conference poster
The mission framing should explore a variety of alternative mission frames, based on the criteria presented above. To set the missions from Korea’s Alchemist Project, it conducts desk research on the current state of technologies and what the future societal challenges will be. It also uses its big data platform to explore quantitative trends behind technologies, and a public platform where citizens can submit their ideas. This work culminates in draft themes, which are refined by the Grand Challenge Committee, comprising experts from science and technology, as well as the humanities and social sciences, including science fiction writers, to help embed some futures thinking into the programme.
This stage should not focus only on the establishment of the substance of the mission (objectives, scope, pathways, etc.) but also its design, governance and process aspects. These are two sides of the same coin and should be addressed simultaneously.
As was learnt the hard way in some missions that started too hastily under intense political pressure, mission framing requires time, dedicated efforts, funding and various sources of information (dedicated strategic policy intelligence, including foresight, mapping and analysis of systems; identification of lock-ins and leverage points for action to feed into the mission framing). “Doing MOIP” begins long before (not after) a mission has been formulated, which can be challenging in the face of political realities such as short-termism, policy cycles or the need for quick wins. While political windows of opportunity – such as heightened attention to sustainability, public health or other critical issues – can accelerate the adoption of an MOIP approach, missions that are rushed or defined at too high a level risk failure. In this regard, the political dimension of missions appears as a double-edged sword: it creates opportunities for more ambitious, legitimate and better-resourced initiatives but it creates pressure for rapid implementation and results that can hinder its execution. The launch of the France 2030 programme, under the direct leadership of the Prime Minister and with strong attention from the President, demanded a significant increase in resources in new ways within the Acceleration Strategies. This proved to be challenging, as the new structures and practices were not yet well-established. The tight schedule under which teams had to work also did not allow for a pilot stage, which is essential for learning and ensuring buy-in from partners. Similarly, in Sweden, a few weeks after the launch of the Impact Innovation programme, the new programme co-ordinators were informed that they had to start preparing the first call for proposals while some of them were still at the stage of devising with partners what a mission approach involves in their area and how it could be implemented. This diverted their attention from the structuring of the programme, the building of the necessary capacity or even the acquisition of a common language.
As previously mentioned, this stage is particularly critical in areas where the level of contestation about the problem and/or the envisioned solution pathways is high. In this case, dedicated activities to strengthen the evidence base, map the actors’ networks (including the “opponents”), and discuss and negotiate are essential.
Engaging stakeholders from the outset of the framing process
The co-creation process for aligning diverse stakeholders and ensuring that the mission is not only well‑defined but also relevant to the specific (national/regional) context is crucial. Without this foundational step, the mission risks being disconnected from the realities it seeks to address. The example of the Dutch mission on circular agriculture showed how starting out on the wrong foot in that regard (not communicating clearly how open or closed the mission is and being consistent with the policies that support broad engagement) might have detrimental effects on the subsequent commitment of different types of stakeholders (Klerkx, Begemann and Janssen, 2024[8]).
Many missions establish open platforms to solicit proposals for missions or possible solutions. Ireland’s Creating Our Future programme provided an opportunity for everyone in Ireland to provide ideas on how to make the country better (e.g. regarding the environment, health, education, poverty, the arts, and diversity and inclusion). This resulted in 18 000 ideas, which the National Challenge Fund used as inspiration for areas to address. The United States’ Energy Earthshots began with an ideation forum that engaged 17 000 researchers from across the Department of Energy’s national labs, resulting in hundreds of concept papers on potential mission areas. It then conducted more targeted outreach to internal and external experts to refine the proposals. After the Earthshots were established, annual summits for each one have brought together relevant stakeholders to discuss ongoing challenges and opportunities, providing accountability on their progress.
Engaging stakeholders from the outset of the process is instrumental in reaching a shared understanding of what a challenge is and what mission scope and level of ambition could be sustainable for the implicated ecosystems and public authorities. This initial process of framing can benefit from a variety of (ongoing) participatory activities, including elements of diagnostic (e.g. mixed methods research) and forward-looking methods (e.g. visioning, scenario workshops, theory of change-based approaches and impact narratives). Dedicated spaces, a coalition of the willing and sufficient time are essential to develop a shared understanding of the current and possible future implications of different problem framings and impact pathways on specific groups and places (e.g. as in the Catalan “shared agendas” approach or in the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems’ (Vinnova) two pilot missions [Hill, 2022]).8 A shared understanding of a problem and its solutions provides a better foundation for scoping mission areas and for deliberating ways to address the problem in a systemic way. However, seeking consensus should not come at the cost of ensuring an adequate diversity of solutions being pursued. Ensuring diversity of innovation pathways may help to increase buy-in for missions. Depending on the nature of the challenge and the scope of the mission area, policymakers may consider more than one pathway or potential solution, within the same mission or in different ones (Reid, Steward and Miedzinski, 2023).
It is vital to strike the right balance in the engagement process between including incumbents and new actors. Incumbents are essential players in missions, as their support is often needed to establish the mission within the existing ecosystem; however, they may also be less likely to embrace transformative change. Challenges should strive to bring incumbent parts of (eco)systems into the fold, instead of alienating them.
When it comes to the deliberative process and stakeholder engagement, the regional and local levels appear to be relevant and instrumental in framing and reframing the mission. This applies to place-based missions, but the “spatialisation” of national missions can also prove to be an effective solution in some cases (for instance, subdividing the mission into local missions, setting regional platforms). However, this does not simply require transferring the mission frame from higher to lower levels of governance; it often actively needs reinterpretation, reframing and appropriation in the process by various actors within specific contexts (Uyarra et al., 2025[9]).
Placing public authorities centre stage in mission framing
Public authorities play a crucial role in ensuring that the process remains open to diverse voices and perspectives, and is well-informed by a balanced mix of evidence and deliberative stakeholder engagement (Miedzinski et al., 2019). This role involves intentionally reaching out to equity-seeking groups that may be traditionally under-represented in STI, as well as users of the solutions developed to address the mission (including government, industry and citizens). A study in the Dutch Top Sectors MOIP showed that while missions did increase the number of participants involved in the mission, they failed to mobilise a more diversified range of stakeholders. The authors concluded that policymakers and the intermediaries to whom they delegate some of the participatory tasks (e.g. ecosystem platforms) are key to play a brokering role and engage more diversified participants with their specific knowledge and various and conflicting worldviews (Wiarda et al., 2023[10]).
This engagement should not be limited to a single stage of the process. These voices need to be present throughout the entire process, from mission conception to narrative development, implementation, dissemination and evaluation. For example, Canada’s National Research Council Challenge Program has issued a challenge to conduct research addressing issues that impact the quality of life of Canada’s Northern peoples. The programme ensures that northern communities are involved at each stage of the Challenge Program, from problem definition to identifying solutions, and requires that all funding applications for research on the challenge include an Arctic or Northern indigenous person, government, organisation or community.9
Even in ecosystem-based missions (see Annex F) where ecosystems lead the development of the mission agenda, public authorities play a crucial role as a moderator and orchestrator. In the Swedish SIPs10 for instance, agencies have been instrumental “behind the scenes”, testing and mobilising ecosystems (or “potential” ecosystems, since some of them involved gathering some communities across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries), asking some competing agendas for the same challenge to team up.
Re-engage with stakeholders when a mission needs reframing.
– National Research Council Canada’s Challenge Programs, conference poster
Public authorities also often act as referees to manage “co-opetition tensions” in missions. This political economy of missions, involving power relationships, territorial disputes and political turf, is less studied.
Public authorities can only support the framing of (sufficiently) ambitious missions if they benefit from high‑level political support, preferably backed by strong overall national strategies. In the absence of such political support, the governance of these missions will remain problematic (Karo, 2018[11]; Boekholt, 2024[12]; Reid, 2023[13]). In particular, cross-sectoral policy co-operation often needs high‑level incentives and direction. This is to overcome typical barriers between departments and agencies, such as fear of losing budgetary control, legal mandate restrictions and a lack of co-operation culture due to a policy silo legacy. For more on this, see Chapter 2.
Finally, the role of public authorities in missions is essential to maximise stakeholder engagement while keeping the framing “under control” so that it remains in line with national priorities. New partners who wish to join may bring their own sub-areas and objectives, which necessitate expanding the scope of the mission or broadening its objectives. This runs the risk of mission drifting or dilution, “covering everything and impacting nothing” as one mission manager put it.
Building the mission partners’ capacity
One cannot assume that public authorities have all the required capacities and capabilities to fulfil these various roles in framing a mission and bringing together the key actors. This is often a key point in time, where mission and stakeholder engagement experts are needed. Research and technology organisations, as claimed in Chapter 4, can be very instrumental in supporting policymakers in these bridging tasks.
Beyond policymakers and intermediaries, it is the capacity of the entire relevant ecosystem of public and private organisations and individuals to actually fulfil the mission that is an essential aspect of a well-framed mission. There is little point in setting a mission with such “transformative” ambition that it is disconnected from what the actors and local ecosystems are able to deliver on under the mission timeline. Designing realistic missions cannot be just a matter of reducing their level of ambition to make them actionable. It should also lead to incentivising an upgrade of the system’s capacity to undertake such an ambitious policy approach. Several MOIPs have organised dedicated training of the mission partners to strengthen their capabilities related specifically to a mission approach (e.g. training in system thinking and design thinking).
Making the mission framing stable and credible while flexible
Well-defined and credible mission objectives are necessary. More generally, the whole framing of the mission needs to be stable and firm enough to instil confidence and incentivise stakeholder engagement. However, it is also essential to have the capacity to revisit, reflect and adapt the goals, time frames and strategic agenda.
Sometimes missions are like old teddy bears, and you need to learn when to let them go – and that’s ok too!
– Mission manager
While the attention at the beginning of the 2020s, when missions were still in their early stages, focused on developing an inspiring mission statement and “SMART” mission goals, following the seminal work of Mazzucato, it is increasingly understood that a more flexible approach is preferable. A lesson from the development of action plans and impact pathways for the Austrian EU missions, for instance, is that ensuring adaptability of the plans is more important than fixing bold targets, in particular in the early phases of community formation around a mission, when the priorities, actor constellation and resources available are still unclear.11
Establish a process for revising the roadmaps in order to update them, but also improve them and make them more precise as the missions progress as trust grows.
– Sweden’s Impact Innovation, conference poster
Mechanisms for flexibility and adaptivity should therefore be built in from the start, such as formal review milestones. This can be an iterative process of adapting goals and strategic agendas at key milestones of the implementation process. This allows for missions to adapt to changing technological and societal conditions. The formulation of the mission is an ongoing process. Especially when missions start broad and generic, developing agreed-upon pathways is sometimes the very essence of what the mission does: facilitating search processes to find which solution directions are feasible technologically and economically, and acceptable socially.
For example, the Korean Third Comprehensive Plan to Solve Social Problems Based on Science and Technology (CP3) reviews its plans to address social challenges every five years as a result of its enabling legislation.12 In Denmark, the INNOmission partnerships are encouraged to update their roadmaps to incorporate learnings from their early projects, revising their objectives and interventions as needed. Similarly, the Austrian public authorities have implemented various arrangements to revise the objectives of the Austrian Transformative Missions as needed. These arrangements typically involve regular monitoring and evaluation of progress towards the defined targets, as well as feedback loops and consultations with relevant stakeholders.
Mission policymakers must also be ready to accept that some missions will not reach their objectives. Some missions can pivot as a result of their regular reviews while others, in whole or in part, may need to be phased out. A developmental evaluation approach throughout the mission framing and implementation, possibly with embedded researchers analysing the mission alongside the mission partners, can help formalise reflexivity in the design process and alleviate some possible defensive reactions from public administrations (Larrue, Tõnurist and Jonason, 2024[14]).
Making mission partners’ expectations explicit
Missions are too often launched without clear views from the different partners regarding what is really expected from a mission approach. The rhetoric used mobilises terms such as “higher ambitions” and “broader holistic co-ordination”, but these remain vague and ambiguous, masking misunderstanding and diverging interests. The mission objectives themselves are of little use when they are vague and all‑encompassing. Since the mission design should be directly linked to what is expected from this policy approach, keeping the expectations implicit and possibly divergent may have serious negative consequences during implementation.
Dedicated engagement activities to collectively develop a mission theory of action can prove very instrumental in this regard. As the partners map the chains of causality that connect the way a mission is designed and governed to the impact it is expected to produce, they are led to reveal and align their expectations. Due to the political nature of missions, actors may be inclined to keep some expectations implicit. This makes it all the more necessary to make an effort to provide opportunities for alignment early in the process and reflect the outcome of such an exercise in the framing (e.g. objectives, design) of the mission.
The OECD Mission Action Lab has developed a mission theory of action to help mission partners collectively reflect on their respective understanding of what a mission is and what it should be (see next section).
A useful theory of action methodology is also provided based on the case of EU missions (Wieser et al., 2025[15]). The authors build the EU missions’ theory of action around four “action fields”: 1) mission formulation and promotion; 2) building public sector capabilities; 3) bottom-up experimentation; and 4) scaling and embedding. While the tool is used in this case for developing a diagnostic of the mission in an interim or final evaluation stage, it can also be used ex ante as a checklist of elements to be addressed collectively during the mission framing.
CSIRO Sprint process
Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has formalised a codesign process prior to officially launching a mission. This process can take one to two years depending on the level of complexity and consensus around a particular challenge. It involves several steps, including at the core a “Sprint process” that involves problem exploration; system mapping; early stakeholder engagement to inform preliminary problem framing; direct interactions for iterative problem reframing; focusing, identifying and defining projects addressing key areas; and, finally, the development of a roadmap including implementation pathways. The resulting mission proposal is submitted to CSIRO’s top decision makers.1
Norway’s process for preparing its national missions
Norway has appointed a cross-sectoral “operational group” to develop each of the two national missions announced in the Long-term Plan for Research and Higher Education 2023-2032 endorsed by parliament in February 2023.2 Both groups had a mandate with a clear calendar. The operational group in charge of preparing the mission on the social inclusion of children and young people was composed of representatives of nine organisations (mainly agencies), which had to work against the following ten-month timeline during the so-called “design phase”:
June 2023: Propose a plan to increase the involvement, mobilisation and sense of ownership of all relevant sectors and actors (including children and young people) to concretise the mission and increase commitment and legitimacy. Consult with all relevant stakeholders (via various meetings and through an online portal). Co-ordinate this process with the concurrent development of a related, higher level strategic document (“white paper”) on social welfare policy by an interdepartmental group of ministries.
November 2023: Perform a stocktaking of knowledge and experiences relevant to the mission and identify knowledge gaps. Map the set of existing programmes and instruments that are relevant to the mission, outline a possible process for combining these in new ways to achieve the mission’s goals and lay out the budgetary implications.
February 2024: Propose time-bound goals, sub-goals and scoping of the mission; propose the design, governance and modes of implementation of the mission after the design phase.
The government approved the final proposal in March 2024.
Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research’s practical guide to formulating effective missions
Wittmann et al. (2024[16]) offer practical guidance to actors in ministries and agencies entrusted with designing, moderating or overseeing a mission formulation process. They address crucial questions such as how to formulate missions to optimise their impact and what criteria the formulation process should meet to ensure that the established goals effectively guide the actions of the involved stakeholders (Figure 2.2).
In addition to a set of key principles to guide the mission formulation process, it provides a “practitioner checklist” and a template to aid in crafting the core mission statement. The checklist is intended to serve as a self-assessment tool for mission stakeholders, while the template is designed to help structure the core statement of a mission.
Notes: 1. See: https://stip.oecd.org/moip/case-studies/44. 2. See: https://stip.oecd.org/moip/case-studies/31.
Sources: CSIRO (2023[17]), Communication with Norwegian authorities, and (Wittmann et al., 2024[16]).
Develop an approach for framing missions that is fit for purpose for the national political context and nature of the challenge. The approach should notably include a specific balance and sequence of various top‑down and bottom-up steps to frame the mission.
Use co-creation processes to achieve buy-in and ownership of the mission initiative. Fair, inclusive and sound bottom-up processes for framing missions should include the relevant actors within and outside government (deliberation, participation, negotiation, strategic policy intelligence).
Provide sufficient time and resources for the mission definition and scoping stage – particularly for more wicked problems, which require more deliberations with different actors. Rushing and underfunding this stage leads to heightened costs of transactions during implementation and lowers the chances of success.
Keep the mission framing “under control” to avoid mission dilution or broadening over mission life cycles, particularly as more actors are crowded in.
Address simultaneously the mission “substance” (objectives, scope, pathways, sub-areas, technologies and components, etc.) and its design (including governance and process aspects) during the early stage of mission framing (hence the need to develop both a theory of change and a theory of action). This approach also builds buy-in to the missions from relevant actors.
Use dedicated engagement activities to collectively develop mission theories of action. This process can help the partners reveal and align their expectations regarding the mission objectives, design and impact.
Establish mechanisms for flexibility and adaptivity from the start, such as formal review milestones. This allows for missions to adapt to changing technological and societal conditions.
Formalise reflexivity in the design process, notably through formative evaluations that promote collective learning.
Use hard evidence (factual knowledge) and soft evidence (stories and narratives) to enable actors to converge on the scope of the problem-solution directionality.
Build advocacy coalitions that identify and address possible contestation points.
Take into account actors’ capacities to deliver on mission goals while “nudging” them beyond the established state of the art. Support an upgrade of the system capacity to undertake a mission policy approach.
Based on their first experiments, some organisations have developed tools for framing missions. However, as mission partners and analysts have focused on understanding what missions are and should be in the context of very different and evolving mission practices, tools specifically adapted to missions (and actually used in a real mission case) are still rare and in their infancy.
Sweden’s mission theory of change
Sweden’s Impact Innovation programme follows an ecosystem-based approach, where the government issued a competitive call for consortia to develop mission-oriented programmes focused on a national challenge. Once they were selected, the individual programmes collectively developed theories of change and other mission planning tools, which present the main components for their work (see Figure 2.3 for an example from one of the programmes called Water Wise Societies). The theories of change present the hypotheses about the perspectives, factors and causal relationships that enable the transition from the current state to a desired new state. They examine five system dimensions (technology and processes, money and value, policy and governance, acceptance and behavioural change, and transition infrastructure), the geographical system levels (global, European, national, regional and local), and three system levels (individual, organisation and system). Each programme uses its theory of change to identify potential partners, set priorities, focus calls for proposals (including for “strategic projects”) and inform the selection of projects.
Source: OECD (2024[3]).
Austria’s impact pathways
Austria has developed impact pathways for each of the Austrian EU Missions (see Figure 2.4).
Source: Eigene Darstellung, Mission Facility (Joanneum Research, 2021[18]).
While they do not claim to be exhaustive, the impact pathways illustrate possible activities (inputs), resulting outputs, medium-term effects on the activity's target groups (outcomes), and expected long-term impacts. These impact pathways are designed particularly effectively because they also demonstrate the effects of multiple inputs on multiple outputs, and the connections between multiple outputs and their outcomes. This demonstrates the important interlinkages across mission activities. The exercise in developing these pathways also provides an opportunity to reflect on the goals and planned activities of the Austrian EU missions.
The Dutch Agenda for Key Enabling Methodologies
For the Mission-Driven Top-Sector and Innovation Policy,13 the development and application of key enabling methodologies (KEMs) are indispensable. By analogy with the key enabling technologies, the KEMs refer to the toolbox of methods, models, strategies, processes, instruments and tools that enable change professionals to tackle missions. KEMs facilitate (i.e. “enable”) the integration of knowledge and insights from the social sciences and humanities with the opportunities that technological developments offer for societal change. KEMs therefore support the development of meaningful applications and interventions and realising the desired societal change.
The development of the Dutch KEM Agenda is part of the Dutch Mission-Driven Top Sectors and Innovation Policy and is led by the Top-sector ClickNL, in close collaboration with key stakeholders in the field, including TNO Vector. This first KEM Agenda appeared in 2020 and was renewed in 2024 (Berkers et al., 2024[19]). The KEM Agenda 2024-2027 presents 11 categories of KEMs that are indispensable in the context of addressing societal challenges and shaping missions: 1) vision and imagination; 2) participation and co‑creation; 3) behaviour and empowerment; 4) experimental environments; 5) value creation and upscaling; 6) institutional change; 7) system change; 8) monitoring and effect measurement; 9) ethics and responsibility; 10) meaning and awareness; and 11) data for inquiry and evidence.
For each of these KEM categories, the KEM Agenda identifies the methods available, the scientific state of the art and the most urgent themes and research questions for addressing the missions.
Korea’s use of foresight and data analytics to identify topics that matter most to society
Strategic policy intelligence is an important aspect of Korean policymaking, and the country is broadly recognised as being at the forefront of foresight and technology forecasting. The government uses these techniques to inform its MOIPs. The CP3 provides direction by identifying 43 social problems and 5 core social problems that it aims to address using STI. To identify these problems, the government conducted an extensive consultation process involving public hearings, experts, relevant ministries and public-private advisory councils to develop the plan. This included a survey of 1 000 members of the general public. In addition, the government conducted big data analysis, where it looked at public sentiment towards key social problems over recent years. This work was coupled with topic modelling analysis that compared news from 2018-2019 to 2020-2021 to see if any new social problems had emerged, and if the sentiment to the problems under the 2nd Comprehensive Plan had changed in any way. Analysis was then conducted of future social problems through the 6th Science and Technology Forecast Survey – a SWOT analysis from the Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP), which evaluates key social problems that STI has a role in addressing. KISTEP also looked at the results from other foresight studies in Europe and the United States. These surveys and research were used to propose a new set of social problems, building on the 2nd Comprehensive Plan. KISTEP held open discussions with related ministries, agencies and local governments to collect their opinions on the draft Comprehensive Plan and these new priorities. The Public-Private Council preliminarily approved the final set of 10 problem domains and 43 social problems for social problem solving before receiving final approval by the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology’s Deliberative Council.
After deciding on the problem domains and social problems, KISTEP and the Public-Private Council for Social Problem Solving identified ten social problems that were candidates for being designated as “core social problems”. Another survey was conducted and the government conducted an internal analysis regarding which of these problems were the most appropriate for a technological response and necessitated government support. Following this process, five core social problems were ultimately selected for additional support through a whole-of-government mission-oriented approach: 1) ageing; 2) cybercrime; 3) reducing fine particle matter; (4) reducing microplastics; and (5) reducing household waste. (OECD, 2025[20]).
OECD Mission Action Lab’s mission theory of action
The OECD Mission Action Lab proposes to use a “mission theory of action” to formalise the expectations and hypotheses that lead to the adoption of a specific type of mission, taking into account the nature of the challenge to be addressed and the underpinning institutional conditions of each mission (OECD, 2024[21]). In short, a “theory of action” is a tool for tracking the specific mission processes and the systemic effects they are expected to generate in addressing a particular challenge. It is “the delivery model for a theory of change” (George, 2019[22]).
Like a theory of change, it should be developed from left to right, using a collective process, starting with the expected realisation of its mission (its objectives). It then describes the mission process outcomes and intermediate process outcomes (what the mission approach is expected to enable, leading to the realisation of the mission). For instance, it might be expected that the gathering of a multiplicity of public and private sector actors from different disciplines, industries and policy areas allows the development of a shared agenda that has strong legitimacy among these actors and beyond, as well as other features, notably a high level of directionality and intentionality. In turn, this shared agenda is expected to include a broader set of potential options directed towards more ambitious and long-term objectives. Based on this shared understanding of what the mission will produce, the partners can then design the main features of the mission along three dimensions: orientation, co-ordination and implementation. These features describe the processes and structures (including governance bodies) to set objectives and targets, co‑ordinate vertically and horizontally, build synergies between funding streams, combine instruments to support a consistent portfolio of activities, etc.
Wieser et al. (2025[15]) adopt a rather similar approach using an MOIP theory of action to provide an integrated perspective on how MOIPs deliver (or not) on their objectives. This approach offers a useful framework to systematically question the gaps between the theory and the practices of specific missions.
Overall, the mission framing process should simultaneously include a theory of change and a theory of action exercises to establish (and connect) the substance of the mission (objectives, scope, pathways, etc.) and its design (governance and process aspects). This process consists of dedicated engagement activities (including workshops, possibly preceded by surveys of individuals). It can help the partners share their knowledge regarding the challenge to be tackled and reveal and align their expectations regarding the mission objectives, design and impact. This approach also strengthens buy-in to the missions from relevant actors and starts building trust among them as a “mission community”.
Ideally, several tasks will have provided key inputs into these exercises:
A mapping of mission stakeholders (including supporters and opponents) in the current policymaking system to better understand how co-operation can mobilise the mission approach, but also be constrained by opposing policy interests.
A scanning of existing policies (including beyond STI).
A broad stakeholder consultation process to refine the scoping and theme of the challenge and to identify competences and willingness to contribute to the activities of a mission, including the potential role of industry.
Possibly studies on particular aspects/areas that are new and uncertain.
Depending on the nature of the challenge, foresight activities can also support the mission framing before collectively developing a theory of change.
Mission policymakers should dedicate resources to developing framing tools specifically adapted to missions. Processes for developing mission theories of change and theories of action, notably, need to be improved and differentiated from logical framework and roadmap exercises.
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 mission framing are presented in this box.
Strengths
How external stakeholder engagement shapes missions is the most prominent strength for framing missions (representing 20% of the responses). The responses underline how this engagement of both public and private sector actors enhances the legitimacy of missions. This engagement is observed in different modalities, such as in public consultations, workshops and scientific peer review impact, involving different sets of actors often at the outset of the framing process. For example, Business Finland based its strategic thematic direction on consultations with industry, research and relevant stakeholders. The connection to societal challenges and high-level policy goals is the second-most observed strength (18%). Most initiatives show a strong alignment with existing government initiatives. For instance, the National Research Council Canada Challenge Programs connect strategies such as the National Quantum Strategy or Northern Policy Framework in the research and development work on the challenges. Another core strength is the existence of more precise roadmaps and theories of change to provide clearer guidance on how to achieve the missions (16%). These documents make the link between intermediate and final outcomes more explicit and identify key levers of change and who is responsible for them. Responses also identify the benefit of quantifiable targets (11%), helping to measure concrete and time-bound missions and sub-missions. The fifth most common response (10%) is the need to co-design missions with partners and stakeholders. This category goes beyond engagement and emphasises providing stakeholders with more formal decision-making roles.
Weaknesses
The biggest weakness for framing missions (45%) is striking the right balance on the mission scope and level of ambition. For instance, with the United Kingdom quantum missions, because quantum technologies are relatively unproven, building consensus among stakeholders is particularly challenging. Other core key weaknesses include the lack of roadmaps and theories of change to guide missions’ work (16%) and the limited stakeholder participation in framing missions (13%). Without clear, explicit guidance, stakeholders have a difficult time engaging throughout the mission’s lifetime and ultimately fail to deliver on established goals. Some missions reported the lack of broad stakeholder engagement in developing the impact and evaluation plans. Tied for the fourth and fifth place (10%) are path-dependency and incumbents’ resistance to change (lack of buy-in to adopt new disruptive approaches) and political interference.
Note: The top five strengths and weaknesses related to mission framing represent respectively 75% of the 116 responses and 94% of 31 responses under this pillar.
References
[19] Berkers, F. et al. (2024), “Agenda Key Enabling Methodologies 2024-20227”, Second edition, https://assets.ctfassets.net/h0msiyds6poj/5g23zzXdURUSBQw2t63e1A/87843d9c20f705dd0dc97bd6f6ca7ecf/240604_KEM_agenda-ENG_LR05_20_juni_2024.pdf.
[12] Boekholt, P. (2024), Breaking down walls and building new bridges: the Whole of Government Approach in Research & Innovation policy, Publications Office of the European Union, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379874461_European_Commission_Directorate-General_for_Research_and_Innovation_Breaking_down_walls_and_building_new_bridges_in_policy_Boekholt_P_2024_the_whole-of-government_approach_in_research_innovation_mutua.
[17] CSIRO (2023), Convening Missions: A Playbook for Collective Implementation of Mission-oriented Innovation, https://www.csiro.au/en/about/challenges-missions.
[22] George, R. (2019), “What is a theory of action?”, Tetra Tech Coffey, https://tetratechcoffey.com/.
[4] Janssen, M. et al. (2021), “The promises and premises of mission-oriented innovation policy—A reflection and ways forward”, Science and Public Policy, https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scaa072.
[18] Joanneum Research (2021), Mission Facility Austria, https://www.joanneum.at/policies/en/products/mission-facility-austria.
[5] Jonason D. et al. (2024), When to choose a ‘mission’ approach?, https://oecd-opsi.org/blog/when-to-choose-a-mission-approach.
[11] Karo, E. (2018), “Mission-oriented innovation policies and bureaucracies in East Asia”, Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 27/5, pp. 867-881, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329760389_Mission-oriented_innovation_policies_and_bureaucracies_in_East_Asia.
[8] Klerkx, L., S. Begemann and M. Janssen (2024), “Mission cocreation or domination? Explorative and exploitative forces in shaping the Dutch circular agriculture mission”, Science and Public Policy, Vol. 52/1, pp. 128-145, https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scae061.
[7] Larrue, P. (2021), “Mission-oriented innovation policy in Norway: Challenges, opportunities and future options”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, No. 104, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/2e7c30ff-en.
[14] Larrue, P., P. Tõnurist and D. Jonason (2024), “Monitoring and evaluation of mission-oriented innovation policies: From theory to practice”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, No. 2024/09, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5e4c3204-en.
[2] Mazzucato, D. (2019), Missions: A beginner’s guide, Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
[1] Mazzucato, M. (2018), “Mission-oriented innovation policies: challenges and opportunities”, Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 27/5, pp. 803-815, https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dty034.
[20] OECD (2025), “Challenges and opportunities of mission-oriented innovation policy in Korea”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, No. 172, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/d725304c-en.
[6] OECD (2025), Harnessing Mission Governance to Achieve National Climate Targets, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/781146eb-en.
[21] OECD (2024), “Designing Effective Governance to Enable Mission Success”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, No. 168, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/898bca89-en.
[3] OECD (2024), Mission-Oriented Innovation Policies for Net Zero: How Can Countries Implement Missions to Achieve Climate Targets?, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5efdbc5c-en.
[13] Reid, A. (2023), Aligning Smart Specialisation with Transformative Innovation Policy: Lessons for Implementing Challenge-led Missions in Smart Specialisation, Publications Office of the European Union.
[9] Uyarra, E. et al. (2025), “Geographies of mission-oriented innovation policy”, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, Vol. 56, p. 100970, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2025.100970.
[10] Wiarda, M. et al. (2023), “Public participation in mission-oriented innovation projects”, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 191, p. 122538, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122538.
[15] Wieser, H. et al. (2025), How do mission-oriented innovation policies work? A theory of action derived from the EU missions, Elsevier BV, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5201630.
[16] Wittmann, F. et al. (2024), Missions with Impact. A practical guide to formulating effective missions, Sustainable Social Market Economies, https://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/isi/dokumente/ccp/2024/NW_BST_Studie_Missionen_mit_Wirkung_ID2187-EN.pdf.
← 1. In this publication, the term “mission partners” designates the actors that are directly involved in the design and implementation of the mission (starting with the early “coalition of the willing” at the beginning of the mission). “Mission stakeholders” are indirectly involved as they receive the benefits and costs of the mission. These two groups change as the mission evolves.
← 2. A high-risk, high‑reward programme is different from an MOIP but can be nested within a MOIP to connect to a broader set of systemic policy measures (e.g. regulations, procurement, commercialisation support).
← 3. Wanzenböck et al. (2020) defines the level of contestation as one of the discriminating features of various challenges. It relates to the extent to which the problem and/or the solutions at stake are subject to diverging claims, values and framings, or conflicts of interest. This can lead to convergence or divergence, regarding the problem at stake but also the solution(s) envisaged to deal with it.
← 4. See, for instance, the results of the OECD study of missions tackling the net zero challenge (OECD, 2024b), which shows that countries have used different staged combinations of top-down and bottom-up processes to formulate the mission objectives and strategic agenda. Most often, these involved different mixes and sequences of political influence; stakeholder consultation, including citizens for the broadest societal missions; and evidence-based studies. Mission objectives also vary greatly in their scope, focus and formulation of the expected impact.
← 5. For instance, the United Kingdom’s UKRI Challenge Fund hired a journalist to help frame its mission brief to ensure it was inspiring and easily understandable.
← 6. For instance, the Dutch mission on achieving a circular economy is divided in five more specific missions: on Energy Transition; Circular Economy; Agriculture, Water & Food; Health and Care; and Security. The Dutch health mission follows a similar approach, with one umbrella mission and four sub-missions, each with its own mission statement and targets. The overall health mission target is: By 2040, all Dutch citizens will live at least five years longer in good health, while the health inequalities between the lowest and highest socio‑economic groups will have decreased by 30%. Sub-mission 1 contributing to this overall mission is: By 2040, the burden of disease resulting from an unhealthy lifestyle and living environment will have been reduced by 30%. Sub-mission 2 is: By 2030, the extent of care will be organised and provided to people 50% more (or more often) than present in one’s own living environment (instead of in healthcare institutions), together with the network around people.
← 7. See: https://stip.oecd.org/moip/case-studies/46, https://stip.oecd.org/moip/case-studies/15 and https://stip.oecd.org/moip/case-studies/40.
← 11. The Impact Pathways of the five missions are available on the Austrian Mission Facility website: https://www.ffg.at/europa/heu/missions/nationale-umsetzung#downloads. Detailed information on the Austrian EU missions is available at: https://stip.oecd.org/moip/case-studies/33.
← 13. See: https://stip.oecd.org/moip/case-studies/3 for more information on the KEM.