Position paper ‘Mission-oriented innovation policy observatory’

This paper describes the purpose and activities of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development’s Mission-oriented Innovation Policy Observatory (MIPO). Missions may be regarded as a narrative for challenge-oriented policies, as a rationale for directional policies engendering change, and as an instrument for governing distributed innovation efforts. While the popularity of missions is rising, there are still many questions and tensions regarding both the governance and instrumentation of missions as well as the (adverse) effects they might have on innovation and societal challenges. More theoretical and empirical grounding is needed to understand when and under which circumstances missions can be effective. The MIPO aims to develop an open access knowledge base on the different aspects of mission policy processes and to create a dialogue amongst researchers, policy makers and societal stakeholders to foster knowledge exchange.