Mission-oriented innovation: from a new vocabulary to a new grammar for regional innovation policy

Abstract

Mission-oriented innovation policy has re-emerged as an active form of state intervention in research and innovation. Inspired by the work of Marianna Mazzucato and others, current mission approaches support calls for a new generation of science, technology and innovation (STI) policy (Mazzucato, 2018; Wanzenböck et al., 2020b; Janssen et al., 2021; Edler et al., 2025). They have been associated with ‘third frame’ or ‘transformative’ innovation policy (Schot and Steinmueller, 2018; Haddad et al., 2022), or a ‘paradigm shift’ from a purely economic to a societal agenda (Diercks et al., 2019). At the regional level, this evolution has been accompanied by what has been described as a ‘normative turn’ (Uyarra et al., 2019), seen in the growing focus on societal problems in regional innovation and industrial policy (Flanagan et al., 2023). These shifts have sparked optimism about the potential of innovation and mission policies to tackle complex societal problems. Terms such as ‘societal missions’, ‘transformative policy’, ‘systems innovation’ or ‘grand societal challenges’ now feature prominently in the regional policy discourse (Coenen et al., 2015; Bailey et al., 2019; Uyarra et al., 2025).