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This article contextualizes the reemergence of mission-oriented innovation policies in the broader search for a new type of innovation policies—and the appropriate organizational forms—that can tackle "grand societal challenges," and focuses on our knowledge gaps in designing and implementing such innovation policies. We identify the concept and practice of dynamic capabilities in the public sector as perhaps the key missing element in the search for the new generation of innovation policies. We offer a brief conceptual and historical overview of what constitutes mission-oriented policies, focusing on two key elements of missions: coordinated public investments and market-shaping policies to "crowd in" private and third sector experimentation and innovation. The article concludes by briefly discussing the central public sector dynamic capabilities for 21st-century missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article involves a conceptual evaluation of a large-scale innovation policy experiment—so-called smart specialization strategies (S3s)—that took place within the framework of the European regional cohesion programs between 2011 and the present. The goal is to provide a collection of reflections offering a wealth of lessons and information regarding the capacity of regional governmental agencies and other actors involved in the innovation system to implement a mission-oriented research and development support program and regarding the institutional and cultural conditions that can facilitate its practical application. In the first section, I briefly review the fundamentals of S3s. In the second section, I propose a framework for the identification of mission-oriented policies and I explain how S3 fits into this category. The following section shows how this policy represents a break with the policies that have long dominated the regional policy landscape. The fourth section describes the designing of this policy whose objective is to make strategic choices and decentralization of information and initiatives compatible. And finally, the last section reports on the emerging institutional forms that seem to facilitate the putting into practice of this design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our purpose is to propose a conceptual model of the growth of knowledge in innovation policy making. We explicitly draw upon evolutionary economics to conceptualize learning as an evolutionary process of the growth of knowledge about policy problems and their solutions. Our model points to the central role of the variation and selective retention of policy alternatives and contributes to the current debate about how to build capacity through and for mission-oriented innovation policies, to address grand social challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we take a fresh look at Research and Innovation (R&I hereinafter) policy and define a new notion: Schumpeterian catalytic R&I policy. Such policy style amends and enriches the new mission-oriented framework for innovation policy by assigning more weight to the microeconomic dimension of private actors' actions and by being more concerned with the temporary nature of interventions. We relate our argument to recent empirical trends in productivity dynamics and innovative activities. These suggest that an innovation slowdown is taking place and, consequently, that a renewed interest in the (re-)direction—rather than on the intensity of innovative activities—is key to the design of R&I policy capable to tackle current challenges. We use the evidence to build a schematic theoretical framework to inform policy design, and we outlined the defining features of our proposed policy style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tackles two "how" questions of mission-oriented innovation policies in East Asia: How do these economies legitimize their mission-oriented innovation policies in the public discourse? and How do they create dynamic capabilities for implementing these policies? The article shows that although on the level of policy choices and design, the global–Western discourse has also entered the East Asian mission-oriented innovation policy rhetoric, this has not stopped the policymakers in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan from relying on old "developmentalist" logics for legitimizing these policies. This also influences actual policy implementation styles: as opposed to Western models of peripheral Schumpeterian agencies offering dynamic capabilities, the East Asian innovation bureaucracies seem to rely on more visible and "politicized" organizations for such capabilities. We also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the broader lessons from mission-oriented programs for innovation policy—and indeed policies aimed at investment-led growth. While much has been written about case studies on missions, this has not resulted in an alternative policy making toolkit. Missions—in the least—require those tools to be just as much about market cocreating and market shaping, as they are about market fixing. The article reviews the characteristics of mission-oriented programs, ooks at key features of those programs that can provide lessons, and discusses how to choose and implement mission-oriented policies, with an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the role of social movements in innovations in general and in mission-oriented policies specifically. The article shows, using the example of the contraceptive pill, how significant societal innovation requires the combination of different communities to create coalitions of change, each with slightly different interpretations of a common mission. Leading mission-driven innovation depends on being able to create and sustain these coalitions—social movements. Such innovation movements play an important role in mission-driven innovation of the kind now being pursued in many countries to ensure that innovation efforts contribute to meeting significant social challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]