Sigrid Jessen (p), Alberto Giacometti (p)

Ainhoa Arrona

Mission-Oriented Innovation Policies (MOIPs) have gained significant attention in political and academic discussions. MOIPs represent a supposed shift in innovation policy, focusing on addressing grand societal challenges and promoting transformative change. While there is support for MOIPs to be implemented at different geographical levels, it remains unclear how to apply place-sensitive perspectives. Substantial criticism to MOIPs is linked to the risk of place blindness. A core argument is that applying one-size-fits-all policies to innovation efforts risks affecting regions by disregarding existing regional specificities and capacities (Tödtling & Trippl, 2005). Thus, several scholars argue for basing MOIPs in local contexts (Wanzenböck et al. 2020). Morrison et al. (2023) advocate for the adoption of Small Wins-strategy, focusing on small-scale bottom-up initiatives, to empower less-developed regions and involve them in mission-oriented efforts to address place-specific challenges. Tödtling et al. (2022) call for reviewing the Regional Innovation System (RIS) approach and introduce the concept of 'challenge-oriented RISs' (CoRISs), centred on the direction of change, inviting stakeholders at various territorial scales, and prioritizing practical application and scaling up of innovations within and beyond regional boundaries.

Furthermore, Brown (2021) advocates for a differentiated approach based on countries contexts. They suggest that a "diffusion-oriented" approach is better suited to break the "low productivity, low innovation equilibrium" in Scotland due to its incremental nature and stronger focus on the Doing-Using-Interacting (DUI) innovation mode (also common in Nordic countries). Instead, he argues that the radical, scientific and technologically-based (STI) innovation mode, widely adopted in the US and England, is better suited for MOIPs.

Empirical research is necessary, first, to identify what characterizes existing innovation policies in different countries and regions; and second, to assess whether missions can be considered as an extension of, rather than a substitute for, conventional regional innovation policy as Hassink et al. (2022) suggest. In Nordic countries, mission-approaches are now being more actively adopted e.g., the Swedish innovation agency, Vinnova, has published roadmaps and handbooks for implementing missions, and has launched pilot programmes. Missions in other Nordic countries are more implicit e.g., Finland governmental organizations VTT and Sitra are considered mission-oriented (Lankinen & Järvensivu 2022).

Preliminary findings show the importance for country-specific variations to successfully implement MOIPs, and stakeholder involvement locally. Empirical evidence shows discrepancy between goals set at national and sub-national levels and insufficient instruments to align innovation efforts at different scales (e.g. Vinnova’s pilot programmes give no guidelines for implementation at sub-national levels).

Ramojus Reimeris (p)

Alberto Giacometti

The world we currently live in is facing a series of crises that are interconnected and have potential to amplify the negative impacts of each other. Prioritizing sustainability becomes crucial, prompting us to reconsider our behaviours, consumption habits, and overall approach to development. This necessitates a shift in public policy ambition, transitioning from managing incremental change to embracing transformational change. With aim and ambition for transformational results, public policy simultaneously is expected to anticipate, orient and coordinate responses among various stakeholders and levels. This underscores the importance of governance, coordination, and especially a multi-level approach, as they can enhance the integrity and ownership of policies.
Mission-oriented approach play an important role in shaping policies that prioritize addressing societal challenges, offering a valuable overarching goals or complementarity to other priority-setting methods. Local missions can act as an organising principle for collaboration in complex and fragmented decision-making structures, especially with an aim to bridge multi-level perspective. It allows different levels and fields of governance to work together, creating a more inclusive and aligned policy framework. Additionally, a guiding principle for mission-oriented approach should be the modifications or transformations of the production systems and consumption patterns.
Mission-oriented approach and transformative innovation policies go beyond industrial change, focusing on systemic innovation and a more equitable balance between technological, political, cultural, and institutional change. Open Discovery Process (ODP) tackle the issues from a local perspective with the participation of local stakeholders that can offer approaches with continuous ownership with the focus on local problems faced by large cross-sections of citizens. ODP is critical to continuously engage with a broader range of stakeholders and co-create plans, design a local mission or formulating a policy and action mix. ODP is based on inclusivity and transparency, and provides directionality by having stakeholders working backwards from societal problems to agree on a shared vision.
Next generation of the Cohesion Policy could follow the challenge-led localised approach as a potential organizing principle – based on place, people and performance. This approach aims to address diverse challenges and promote place-based development pathways and local missions could be a suitable instrument for that.
The efforts at the national level to introduce and accelerate transformation may not always align with other levels, creating opportunities and initiatives for place-based transformation. And there is a great potential for ODP to be positioned at the core of the place-based approach maintaining multi-level integrity in sustainability initiatives.

Ainhoa Arrona (p), Edurne Magro

Ramojus Reimeris

The urgent need to address grand societal challenges has led to the emergence of new transformative innovation policy approaches. Among these, mission-oriented innovation policies (Mazzucato, 2018) have gained significant popularity among policymakers. Despite its rapid diffusion, the concept remains fuzzy and still needs further research (Janssen et al, 2023a), spetially at regional level, since this approach lacks the consideration of the role of places and geographies for transformative change (Coenen, et al., 2015; Coenen & Morgan, 2020).

Regional innovation policy approaches, for their part, have been widely shaped by the notion of Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) in the last decade. Despite the experimental roots of S3, the wide adoption by European regions has shown some weaknesses, especially for coping with grand societal challenges (Aranguren et al., 2023; Benner, 2020; Hassink & Gong, 2019). In particular, they have largely failed in facilitating broader forms of social innovation and incorporating the voice of society, which is particularly important for addressing grand societal challenges. Therefore, the challenge for implementing a mission approach at regional level relies not only on giving directionality to existing regional innovation policies, but developing new governance models that facilitate this transformation, following a multi-actor, multi scalar perspective (Pontikakis et al., 2022, Serger et al., 2023).

The role of entrepreneurial state (Mazzucato, 2015) in regions can be performed by different governments at different territorial scales. This role depends on the development of several capacities (McCaan, 2023, Kivimaa & Morgan, 2023; Wazenbok et al, 2020, Janssen et al., 2023). Following a multi scalar perspective same missions can be enacted differently in different local contexts (Brent et al, 2023) and governance contexts and structures are particulary relevant for shaping how regional innovation policies are designed and implemented (Janssen et al, 2023b).

This paper focuses on the multilevel dimension of regional missions-oriented policies by exploring the role that governance approaches and institutional capacities play on defining and articulating missions. The paper argues that subsidiarity can naturally emerge and also be purposefully designed to articulate a multilevel approach that enables the mobilisation of regional resources, instruments and communities. It analyses subsidiarity and governance mechanisms implemented for developing a green mobility initiative in the Basque Country region in Spain by the regional government and the mirror mission implemented at sub-regional level focused on new mobility, to learn about the relevance of institutional capacities on how the strategies are enacted in a multilevel regional context.