This document is meant to spark conversations and stimulate thinking around the mission-oriented framework, including the fundamentals about "mission": evolution, concept and some lessons. This deck also serves the purpose of systematising questions from Camden Council, step-by-step implementation recommendations and case studies.

1. Mission-oriented
innovation in
the urban context
Camden Council
IIPP Placement project

2. Content and purpose of the document
This document is meant to spark conversations and stimulate thinking around the mission-oriented framework, including the
fundamentals about "mission": evolution, concept and some lessons. This deck also serves the purpose of systematising questions
and concerns from Camden Council teams, step-by-step implementation recommendations and case studies.
Mission-Oriented Policy: The basics
Evolution, concept, lessons, and structure
Step-by-step recommendations
Framing missions, engagement, participation and
collaboration, organisational capabilities, finance and
funding, and monitoring and success measurement
Manchester case study
Case studies to provide grounded context to illuminate
how a mission-oriented approach can be implemented by
subnational governments
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3 - 12
13 - 26
F
27 - 36

3. Mission-oriented
Policy: The basics
3

4. 4
“The Moon and the Ghetto”:
evolution of mission-oriented policy
● When referring to “mission-oriented” policy and organisations,
the Apollo program - that put a man on the Moon - and the
Manhattan Project are often cited as examples
● In fact, they represent a “first generation” of mission-oriented
policy, in which public funding, R&D, cross-sectoral
collaboration and public-private partnerships were directed to
particular technological achievements
● These missions were set “top-down” by the authorities, but
involved “bottom-up” experimentation and innovation, with
many “spill-overs” that transcended the missions. Some
textiles and food developed for astronauts are now part of our
daily lives!

5. 5
“The Moon and the Ghetto”:
evolution of mission-oriented policy
● However, today’s more pressing challenges, from
economic inequality to pandemics, from loneliness to
climate change, have their own dynamics
● As Richard Nelson put in his essay “The Moon and the
Ghetto”, technology alone is not sufficient to address
complex social problems. What served for the moonshot
challenges may not help for the ones in the ghetto!
● Nonetheless, there’s much to learn and apply from the
early technology-focused efforts. The “mission-oriented
policy” approach provides a useful framework and
policy-design principles to tackle these “wicked problems”
through innovation

6. 6
Mazzucato & Dibb (2019:3). Modified version of Table 5 in Soete & Arundel (1993: 51).

7. Conceptualising mission-oriented policy
Rather than focusing on particular sectors – as in traditional industrial policy
– mission-oriented policy focuses on problem-specific societal challenges,
which many different sectors interact to solve. The focus on problems,
and new types of collaborations between public and private actors to
solve them, creates the potential for greater spillovers than a sectoral
approach…
… The new framework seeks to better envision, justify, measure and assess
public investments, working within an ecosystem of public, private
and third sector actors across the innovation chain. It focuses on the
role of the state as shaping and creating markets, not only fixing
them.
7
Mariana Mazzucato
“
”

8. Key lessons for missions (Mazzucato 2018)
Missions should be:
1. Picking the willing → not about picking “winners”, but taking strategic decisions and
directions in shaping sectors
2. Co-shaping markets → markets don’t exist in a vacuum, but are co-shaped by public and
private actors. Public sector requires internal capabilities to play its strategic part
3. Welcoming experimentation → and fundamental uncertainty as a starting point, by
having a “portfolio” approach
4. Focusing on the quality of finance → different sources, for every stage
5. Conducting proper engagement → in setting, governing and evaluating missions
6. Sharing risks and rewards → not privatising the latter and socialising the former
8

9. “Market-shaping” vs. “Market-fixing” approaches
Kattel, Mazzucato, Ryan-Collins & Sharpe (2018)
9

10. Mission’s structure
Addressing a “grand challenge”
(eg. transitioning to a zero carbon
economy, or an ageing population)
may result in different “missions”,
with clear targets and whose
achievement can be measured.
For every mission, in turn, different
sectors (eg. transport, health, AI)
must be involved, as well as a
portfolio of “bottom-up” projects.
10

11. A new policy framework for missions
(Mazzucato 2018)
Missions should:
- Be well-defined
- Comprise a portfolio of projects
- Involve different sectors and types of actors
- Require joined up policy making
11

12. Some examples...
12

13. Step-by-step
recommendations
13

14. Pillars
14
Mission framing
Engagement,
participation
and collaboration
Organisational
capabilities
Finance
and funding
Dynamic
measurement

15. Framing missions
Guidelines for mission development.
When setting up to create a mission, remember to be these five
things:
1. Be bold, inspirational, with wide societal relevance
2. Have a clear direction: targeted, measurable, and
time-bound
3. Be ambitious but realistic with research and innovation
actions
4. Be cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, and cross-actor
innovation
5. Drive multiple, bottom-up solutions.
15

16. Framing missions
Guidelines for mission development.
16
Further considerations for Camden
● How to set up missions when agency is limited? Particularity of
local-level mission setting vs. national-level
● What do you do when a mission can't feasibly be achieved within
the existing confines/ levers of local government?
● Should you still aim to advance towards a mission that cannot be
achieved in existing structures?
● Is there a gold standard for a mission's size/scope
(in the local government context)?
● What are the features of a ‘good’ mission scope?
● How can we relate the Camden 2025 strategy to “missions”? How
do these five criteria for framing them apply to the goals
considered there?

17. Engagement, participation and collaboration
How to engage citizens in co- designing, co-creating, co-implementing and co-assessing missions?
Missions should be designed hand-in-hand with the citizens to harness the drive for change
● Requirement: a sound and transparent co-design process to select and
frame missions → to obtain legitimacy
● Start with acknowledging that research and innovation are not separate to
society, only populated by academics and experts
● Include citizen participation at all key stages: (1) mission selection and
definition, (2) implementation, (3) assessment (evaluation, review and
monitoring process)
● Include multiple perspectives: citizens, civic organisations, policymakers,
researchers, business/industry
● Be open to possible contestation and debate
● Mind the challenge: avoid the capture of missions by vested interests, and
recognising the differences between long term civic needs, and passing
trends and phases
17

18. Engagement, participation and collaboration
How to engage citizens in co- designing, co-creating, co-implementing and co-assessing missions?
Missions should be designed hand-in-hand with the citizens to harness the drive for change
18
Further considerations for Camden
● How might you collectively agree a mission with the wide array
of partners that need to be part of achieving it?
● How to create legitimacy and early buy-in when developing
missions?
● How to incorporate innovative, digital participatory tools (seen
in responses to Covid-19) into mission framing and
engagement?
● How to bring about citizen deliberation in the COVID-19 and
Post COVID-19 scenario?
● How should participation look like in each distinct stage
(i.e: mission selection, implementation, assessment)?
What guiding principles and mechanisms should reign them?
● How do existing participation mechanisms reflect the variety of
voices of Camden citizens? What limitations exist?

19. Organisational capabilities
What are the public sector capabilities and instruments needed to foster a dynamic innovation ecosystem, including the ability of civil
servants to welcome experimentation and help governments work outside silos?
From a governance perspective, the following capabilities need to be nurtured and
developed:
● Experimentation, learning-by-doing
● Cross-sectoral collaboration, coordination between various policy fields,
synergies and breaking ‘silos’
● Management of bottom-up citizen science and innovation initiatives such as
accelerators, grants, prize schemes and other types of rewards and incentives
● Dynamic public procurement (used as a demand-side stimulus to create new
markets, not for cost-savings only)
● Project portfolio management
● Leadership that encourages risk- taking and adaptive explorative capacities
Key words: trust, agile, experimentation, collaboration, risk-taking instead
of de-risking, breaking siloes
19

20. Organisational capabilities
What are the public sector capabilities and instruments needed to foster a dynamic innovation ecosystem, including the ability of civil
servants to welcome experimentation and help governments work outside silos?
20
Further considerations for Camden
● What capabilities and experiences does Camden already have?
● What role(s) should Camden play in a “mission-oriented”
framework. What skills do they demand (e.g. to be a
“match-maker” of citizens needs and resources?)
● What do we need to strengthen/develop/build?
● How to set up appropriate lines of accountability in the
context of local policymaking?
● How to embed collaborative systems and human learning
partnerships into a public value approach which regards
missions as an important part of strategy setting?

21. Finance and funding
How can mission-oriented finance and funding leverage and crowd-in other forms of finance, galvanising innovation across actors (public,
private and third sector), different manufacturing and service sectors, and across national and transnational levels?
● Create an ecosystem of financing between public and private actors
● Recognise that public financing can crowd-in and galvanize other
forms of investment
● The public part of the ecosystem will include research funding,
public venture capital funds as well as procurement instruments
aimed at SMEs, national and regional public banks
● Apply a wide range of funding instruments available to suit different
areas of this risk landscape.
● As the private sector tends to be risk-averse, use bold
mission-oriented funds that are willing to invest in the more
uncertain part of the technological and market landscape (and areas
with high capital intensity).
● Share not only risks but also the rewards
21

22. Finance and funding
How can mission-oriented finance and funding leverage and crowd-in other forms of finance, galvanising innovation across actors (public,
private and third sector), different manufacturing and service sectors, and across national and transnational levels?
22
Further questions
● What different financial sources could fund Camden’s
missions?
● How the existing funding mechanisms for local government
favour or difficult “mission-oriented” policies?
● How should “portfolio” of “bottom-up” projects be funded?
● Should citizen crowdfunding have a part in funding missions?
If yes, which space should it have, and how it could be
harmoniously incorporated along with other sources of
funding?
● How should risk be assessed?
● What are the implications of the different time frames of a
mission (short, medium and longer term) for their finances?

23. Dynamic measurement
How to move beyond simple, budget-constrained, static, allocative efficiency measurement but instead capture the whole extent of
missions’ reach?
● Adopt a participatory, transparent, open data policy
● Move beyond simple CBA (cost-benefit analysis)
● Assess the performance of mission-oriented investments in terms of
creation of public value, dynamic efficiency and their ‘additionality’,
meaning the extent to which they have been successful at catalysing
activity that otherwise would not have happened (dynamic spillovers)
● Base public policy appraisal and evaluation on a wider understanding of
public value
● Adapt the evaluation to the specific characteristics of the mission, such
as a portfolio of projects, taking into account the contribution of
non-governmental actors
● Capture the positive side- effects of missions (innovations that develop
through the mission agenda, but are deployed outside of the direct
mission remit)
23

24. Dynamic measurement
How to move beyond simple, budget-constrained, static, allocative efficiency measurement but instead capture the whole extent of
missions’ reach?
24
Further questions
● What success measurement frameworks have worked at Camden in the past?
● What “spill-overs” are usually produced but not fully captured when
evaluating the Council’s policies? What kind of evaluation frameworks would
make them visible?
● What are the rhythms/ methods by which you might want to revisit
a mission’s scope along the course of programme of work?
● How do you evaluate a mission's success? (particularly in an ongoing way,
as opposed to simply assessing whether the mission was achieved or not)
● How do you deal with the problem of target driven approaches and how they
are perceived at a local level when the experience is often of national
government setting approaches which lead us to ‘hit the target but miss the
point’?
● What oversight mechanisms could be established to evaluate progress?
How could stakeholders be engaged in this?

25. Measurement
Guidelines for mission development
25
How to measure progress towards
the achievement of a mission?
Frameworks in which costs and
benefits are knowable,
quantifiable and linear will not
suffice for complex/systemic
problems
Instead, acknowledging
uncertainty, contingency,
disproportionate effects, the
importance political decision and
quantitative assessment become
crucial
Source: Simon Sharpe

26. Missions in the context of local government?
Specific features of local governments as organisations, with their opportunities and challenges in relation to m-o framework.
Agency Funding Flexibility
Closer to citizens
and users
CONSTRAINS OPPORTUNITIES
Implications of
different time
Collaboration
between various
fields
Appraisal and
evaluation
Dynamic monitoring
Cross-sectoral
cooperation
'Bottom-up'
engagement
Innovations that
develop through the
mission agenda
Participative
co-design processes

27. Manchester
Case study
27

28. Case studies
We have chosen several case studies to bring into the discussion on the
mission-oriented approach. They are cases in which the UCL Institute for
Innovation and Public Purpose has been involved, and from which some valuable
lessons can be extracted.
Each of them can provide grounded context to illuminate how a mission-oriented
approach can be implemented by subnational governments, through learning
context-specific lessons as to what went well, what challenges arose and how they
were dealt with.
Case studies featured
• Greater Manchester - A mission oriented approach to clean growth
• Basque Country - (1) Building a network for a green transition in Debagoiena Valley
• Basque Country - (2) Bizkaia Egiten (“Making Biscay” plan)

29. Greater Manchester- A mission oriented approach to clean growth
A clean growth mission for Greater Manchester-The importance of mission-setting for Greater Manchester Combined
Authority.
Overview:
Greater Manchester is a city region comprised of ten
local authorities in the North West of the UK. In
January 2019, Greater Manchester started the
consultation process on the target of achieving
carbon neutrality by 2038, one of the most ambitious
targets of any city region in Europe, and 12 years
earlier than the previous Greater Manchester goal of
2050.
key challenges– how to reduce carbon emissions,
how to improve air quality, how to enhance the
natural environment and how to increase the
efficiency with which resources are used.
“It is helpful to think of societal grand challenges as
complex design problems that require radical
innovations and multiple areas of the economy to
alter their trajectory”
Mission:
Carbon neutral living within the
Greater Manchester economy by
2038
29

30. Step by step approach
in practice:
• Convert an aim into a mission
• Understand the context and results
of recent evidence and research
• Plotting our research, underpinned
by IIPP's recent experiences in
working with the UK
• Populating on mission roadmap the
key hypothetical mission projects
that can grow, through bottom-up
experimentation on experience
When approaching the
aim of carbon neutrality in
Greater Manchester from
a mission-oriented
perspective, they used the
following methodology:

31. The mission
roadmap for
Greater
Manchester:
Carbon neutral city
region by 2038

32. Mission projects
These mission projects are hypothetical and have been developed based on recent sectoral and cross-sectoral studies undertaken by GMCA.
In reality projects would ideally emerge from participative co-design processes, reinforcing 'bottom-up' engagement as a core principle of
mission-oriented innovation.
Project 1: Carbon neutral retrofit and new-build for residents and industries
Project 2: Climate resilient public realm
Project 3: Citizen-oriented Circular Economy and Sharing Economy Initiatives
Project 4: 21st Century energy supply
Project 5: Walkability, cycle-ability and demography-led clean transit links
Project 6: Behaviour change for carbon neutral living

33. Basque Country - (1) Building a network for a green transition in
Debagoiena Valley
Overview: The Debagoiena 2030 Plan is looking to
establish a mission-oriented perspective for the
development of this industrialised valley in the Basque
Country. The goal is carry on a social, industrial, and
green-focused transformation of the region. In order to
achieve this, a governance structure integrated by local
governments, citizens and cooperatives (as the world
famous Mondragón Cooperative) has taken place.
IIPP is currently working with the governments of the Biscay
and Guipúzcoa provinces on topics as social innovation,
public sector development, and Sustainable Development
Goal-driven policy plans
key challenges– “The Basque country is in many ways at the
forefront of reinventing capitalism. It has a great tradition of
cooperative-owned firms, and a policymaking tradition focused on
co-creation. Such socially embedded capacities and capabilities should
set the region up for successfully transitioning into digital capitalism,
where data is owned by citizens and business models add (rather than
subtract) public value.” Prof. Kattel
Mission:
The social, industrial, and
green-focused transformation of the
Debagoiena Valley

34. Basque Country - (2) Bizkaia Egiten (“Making Biscay” plan)
Overview:
The Bizkaia Egiten plan focuses on three challenges: the
demographic (ageing population and gender equality),
climate change (environmental issues, social welfare,
regeneration, reorientation of the economy, recovery of
waters and rivers), and develop the economic activity
through innovation, entrepreneurship, and reconversion of
industrial firms.
key challenges
IIPP is helping Biscay provincial government in relation to:
● Institutional transformation and capabilities
● Matching financial resources with the SDGs
● Rethink the tax system for that purpose
● Conditions for public funding recipients in relation to SDGs
Mission:
Being developed, but related to
demographic challenges, climate
change and reorientation of the
economy

35. Case reflection:
Directions: How to choose directions, and what should the
future 'missions' be? What is the role of local government?
Evaluation: How would a mission-oriented framework, as
opposed to a market failure framework, translate into new
indicators and assessment tools for evaluating public
policies, beyond the micro-economic cost/benefit analysis?
How does this alter the crowding in/out narrative?
Organisational change: How should public organizations be
structured to accommodate the risk-taking and explorative
capacity, and the capabilities needed to envision and
manage contemporary challenges?
Risks and rewards: How can this alternative
conceptualization be put into practice so investment tools
are framed to socialize both risks and rewards and growth
is not only 'smart' but also 'inclusive'?

36. Implementation/governance questions
• Inherently exploratory process - Framework just finalised in 2 years
• Uptake, ongoing and in the very early stage
• Learning process - uncertainties
• Completely new way of innovating
• Practice-based learning

37. Missions
and Camden
brainstorming session
37

38. Q1: How is this similar/ different to other
approaches that we used?
● …
●
38
Q2: Which areas do we feel confident
about?
● …
●
Q3: Which are areas for development?
● …
●
Mission framing
Engagement,
participation
& collaboration
Organisational
capabilities
Finance
and funding
Dynamic
measurement
PILLARS
GROUP 3

39. Q4. What are the particularities of local government/
Camden in relation to this framework?
DISADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS ADVANTAGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Other thoughts
● …
●
GROUP 3

40. Q5: What financial levers do we have available
to us?
● …
●
40
Funds from
central
government
Venture capital Crowdfunding
Grants and
prizes
R&D funding
SOURCES
Funding from
community
Council Tax
Business loans
LEVERS
GROUP 3

41. Next steps?
41