Mobilising private investment to address societal challenges

3. Engaging the private sector in the framing of the missions

Developing a vision

At the heart of MOIPs, governments express well-defined objectives related to a societal challenge, in a defined timeframe. The mission statements are only the first step in providing direction. Mission owners need to break down missions into more specific pathways for how they will achieve the overarching goals using roadmaps and theories of change (OECD, 2024[2]). These types of documents support governments in developing a common narrative around the missions and are important vehicles in inspiring stakeholders, including the private sector. A set of clear short- and long-term goals helps provide certainty for businesses, value chains and investors regarding the scale and rate of change they can expect from government. These goals can create savings for business (e.g., avoiding higher prices of energy or taxation in the future, as well as potentially broader costs of climate change), lower the risk of their own investment decisions, and spur more long term thinking from the private sector (Morgan, Levin and Song, 2015[20]). In this regard, the existence of more precise roadmaps and theories of change to provide clearer guidance on how to achieve the missions is the third most common strength for framing a mission from the mission survey (representing 16% of the responses for strengths under this theme).

Businesses want these types of documents to be easily understandable and have clear boundaries. These visions can be altered over time to reflect the current business environment but should stay true to the overarching goal. Some businesses have found the missions they participated in lacked an overall plan, or even a desired end state, which made it difficult for them to understand how to contribute at first. This is unhelpful for companies, who are looking for a level of certainty from governments. One example of how to develop these documents is Sweden’s Impact Innovation Programme, which has theories of change for its five programmes, as well as an overall theory of change for the programme. These documents provide sub-objectives, identify key leavers of change and corresponding activities, and suggest actors who will lead the progress on these activities. In the Netherlands’ Mission Driven Top-Sector and Innovation Policy, it sets annual plans to implement broader four-year agendas, which it suggests help stakeholders see the big picture.

At the same time, the biggest weakness mission managers have framing missions (45%) is striking the right balance on the mission scope and level of ambition and the third biggest weakness is the lack of roadmaps and theories of change to guide their work (16%). Many policymakers have experienced a degree of ‘buyers’ remorse’ after setting their mission goals, as they were too narrow or too broad, they were not able to be measured, or key stakeholders were not enthused in supporting the goals.

Crowding in private sector resources will require: (1) breaking the missions down into concrete problems/challenges and (2) opening the missions up to bottom-up participation. – Mission survey response

Ensuring the Missions are aligned to the roadmaps of technology developers and, where possible, are meeting the requirements of end users, will encourage private investment. – Mission survey response

Policymakers need to be mindful that each of the organisations supporting a mission need space to make their own choices but within boundaries. If you bought a new car, you could configure it to your content – modify the trim or add heated seats – but you can’t have the chair on the roof. There needs to be boundaries with missions. – Private sector interviewee

No one is going to change unless the pain to stay the same is more than the anticipated change in the future. Try to develop pain of the future thinking – develop the overall vision for industry to see where they may end up if they stay the same. – Private sector interviewee

Engaging businesses in the framing of missions

The engagement process to set a mission is a major part in crowding in private sector interest into the work that follows delivering on it (Larrue, 2021[1]). This process requires sufficient time to bring together the relevant actors and digest the information that is provided. While it should balance the influence of different parties (including incumbent versus emerging viewpoints within these stakeholder groups, and other dimensions like size and location), stakeholders must feel some level of ownership over the missions. For framing missions, external stakeholder engagement shaping missions is the most prominent strength for policymakers on the mission survey (representing 20% of the responses for strengths under framing). A co-design / co-creation approach with mission partners and stakeholders was tied for the fourth most common strength mission managers reported for crowding in (representing 12% of the responses for strengths under crowding in). For example, the French Acceleration Strategies involved industry and other stakeholders in the development of its roadmaps​. This included an online portal and other sector-specific forums, such as the Digital Health Council, which provided inputs on the economic development of digital health and the structure of the sector. The National Research Council of Canada Challenge Programmes also involved stakeholders in the up-front design of programmes through a series of workshops, which helped it build early buy-in. Its programmes also leveraged existing consortia to understand the combined perspective of key industry players. For Business Finland’s Missions, it conducted strategic foresight as a core part of its consultations, helping identify the existing thematic interests of companies while also exploring the long-term direction for their industries. In Australia, CSIRO’s Missions engaged with large multinational enterprises, using the foresight work they had done on technology trends to partially inform its mission goals.

Industry needs to be involved in the framing from the beginning if we want to engage them. Make sure that the top down meets the bottom up! – Conference breakout room 

The role, mandate and tasks in the integration of the private sector can be further sharpened in order to better align mutual expectations in advance and avoid misunderstandings. – Mission survey response

A particular challenge seems to stem from the lack of ability to mobilize the private sector in favour of missions, let alone their budgets and programmes. – Mission survey response

Several missions have productivity growth as a major goal for their work, alongside the overall societal challenge they are addressing. For instance, this is the case for the UKRI Challenge Fund where the government of the United Kingdom requires a large amount of matched funding for each of its challenges. To ensure there is sufficient demand from businesses for challenges, they are asked to submit their intentions of interest before the objectives are set. This approach worked better for some sectors (e.g., automative and aerospace sectors) than others where there was less of an established industry culture in supporting R&D (e.g., construction) so building this capacity ended up as part of the work packages. After challenges were selected, senior industry leaders were appointed for each challenge to help secure further investment from industry and refine the vision for the challenge. Overall, the government has invested £2.6 billion in the Challenge Fund, and this has been matched by £3 billion from the private sector. Similarly, the French Acceleration Strategies issued a "Call for Expression of Interest" to allow project leaders (industries, territories, research centres) to bring forward their projects and identify obstacles (technical, regulatory, financial institutions) before setting their missions.

Interviewed participants involved in framing the missions feel this was an important part of the process. By being able to contribute at these early stages, businesses are more aware of what is expected of them at the implementation stage. Showing businesses what areas are major government priorities provides them with confidence to invest in-kind resources and funding. In addition, while governments cannot take every viewpoint into account, businesses are able to influence the scope of the mission to align it with their priorities and ensure they are eligible for funding. Industry associations are also able to convene their members to build awareness and commitment towards missions in framing the missions (this role is discussed more in the coordination section). Mission-owners must be wary not to spread the mission too thin, which risks losing the directionality effects of a mission-oriented approach, but key businesses must ultimately be able to see themselves in the mission if governments want to secure their buy-in and pursue certain topics. At the same time, some of the missions that are overly private-sector-led are not the most transformative and relying on the transformation of just a few businesses is counter to some of the core mission principles, including supporting novelty and the creation of new markets.

In contrast, interviewees without direct involvement in the framing see less value from the process and seem to have a looser attachment to the overall goals. There are also a large number of constituents who will not want to be involved in the mission even if it is relevant to their work. Governments must understand that not everyone wants to change their current business models and ways of working, or at least not change at the same pace. As a result, they should focus on these coalitions of the willing and help speed up efforts underway (Mazzucato et al., 2024[21]).

Governments need to balance setting big societal goals and what industry players are actually there to deliver on them. – Private sector interviewee

When you speak to many businesses, they are good at saying they want to change the world, but they want to do it at a pace that suits them and benefits them more than society and the economy as a whole. Governments need to help them be more risky and change faster. – Private sector interviewee

Formalising business involvement in the mission selection and strategizing

Businesses are often involved in the governance of mission-oriented programmes, including in the framing of the mission. In fact, the third most common strength highlighted in the mission survey for how countries crowd-in the private sector is involving them and public sector stakeholders in mission governance (representing 15% of the responses for strengths under crowding-in). The role of industry representatives falls along a spectrum from advisory roles to more formal roles in decision-making bodies.

These roles can also evolve at different stages of the mission – for instance, businesses may have more responsibility in the selection of the mission and then not have a role in the implementation, or they may feed into the mission design process and be provided actual decision-making responsibilities when it comes to selecting projects (discuss in more detail below).

When it comes to the framing, Denmark’s Innomissions programme had a competitive process where the government selected four industry-academic consortia to oversee the implementation of each of its mission areas based on roadmaps they co-developed. This ‘Nordic model’ for missions is similar in Sweden. Sweden’s Strategic Innovation Partnership (SIPs) programmes had a competitive process where the government selected consortia based on their co-developed Strategic Innovation Agendas for addressing challenges. It followed a similar process for its Impact Innovation Programme, which also required the winning proposals to develop theories of change.

The Austrian EU Missions aim to mobilise and coordinate relevant Austrian public and private actors around the five Horizon Europe Missions. To rally these relevant actors, the government established Mission Action Groups (MAGs), which are co-chaired by a representative of an STI and a sectoral ministry and have members from regions, researchers, businesses and civil society. The MAGs developed recommendations and actions plans for guiding the work on the missions (OECD, 2025[22]).