Catch-up and Mission-oriented Innovation

Abstract

Innovation has not only a rate but also a direction: the twenty-first century is becoming increasingly defined by the need to respond to major social, environmental, and economic challenges. This chapter looks at how innovation policy can be reframed around ‘missions’, to guide both innovation policy and industrial strategies around key societal challenges facing countries. This means changing the focus from technologies and sectors to problems that different sectors (across manufacturing and services), actors (public and private), and disciplines are required to solve together. The chapter first reviews the characteristics of mission-oriented programmes before looking at key features of those programmes that can provide lessons.