Iris Wanzenböck: Innovation policy should effectively and inclusively address societal challenges
In recent years the focus of innovation policy has shifted away from economic growth and towards creating new means for tackling societal challenges like climate change, public health or food security. But what problems and solutions are we prioritising, and who is deciding this?
Iris Wanzenböck is an Assistant Professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, where she focuses on the governance of innovation policy for societal challenges and transformative change. In this interview she explains why it’s so important to reflect on how we are using this so-called mission-oriented innovation policy for more effective and inclusive solutions to societal challenges.
Your work focuses on mission-oriented innovation policy. What is this, and how is it different from what was done before?
Mission-oriented innovation policy is innovation policy that’s geared towards creating new means for tackling societal challenges related to climate change, healthy ageing or food security. It’s a relatively new trend in innovation policy. Prior to this the attitude was more “we need innovation for economic growth, and it doesn’t matter what kind of innovation”. This is not problematic per se, but we can also invest in policies directed to societal issues that need some kind of push, or require coordination of actors and activities that would not happen naturally.
So why is important to study mission-oriented innovation?
Looking at national- or European-level policy over the last ten years, it’s clear that policymakers have really jumped on the bandwagon. It seems that nowadays mission-oriented innovation policy is everywhere. But these missions are often formulated ad-hoc and poorly conceptualised. No one really knows how to do it.
The problem is that setting priorities is very much a normative process.
Take Horizon 2020, the EU’s Research and Innovation programme. Compared to its predecessor the focus has shifted from industrial and technological goals towards funding research that is more relevant and beneficial for society. With the societal focus, things are getting more contested and complex, and also uncertain. The problem is that setting priorities is very much a normative process. When you prioritise certain issues, many others, perhaps also important, are left out. So which societal issues require innovation, but also what type of innovation? Who defines this, the old networks or also new types of actors? And are the needs of those on the receiving end taken into account?
Poorly defined problems or excessive emphasis on technological solutions risk undermining a mission's legitimacy within society, and its effectiveness in the end. For mission-oriented innovation to be a successful new policy direction, there needs to be an understanding of what it involves for governance and decision-making, what it implies for the search of uncertain solutions, and the positive and negative effects of prioritising problems or solutions.
How did you get started working on this topic?
I became interested in this change in innovation policy at the time when the first EU policies were being directed towards societal challenges. I wrote my Master thesis on the topic, but this was 2012 there was absolutely no material yet. This meant my PhD was on something completely different, but luckily, when I came to Copernicus the field was ready for me.
What has your work shown so far?
Our work so far has been mostly conceptual - it’s important to understand the challenges before moving on to practice. In a recent paper we show that successful mission-oriented policy making needs to consider the contestation, complexity and uncertainty inherent to societal challenges, and include both technological and societal dimensions. Innovation policy used to focus on the development of new technologies, but societal challenges are not engineering problems and a new technology is not a one size fits all solution. For certain societal challenges we might need more institutional solutions.
We also show that because issues are often so complex, it’s impossible to know for sure whether proposed solutions will work. This requires a new kind of thinking, and new governance processes to deal with this “wickedness”.
Successful mission-oriented policy making needs to consider the contestation, complexity and uncertainty inherent to societal challenges, and include both technological and societal dimensions.
But now you are starting to look at examples of mission-oriented innovation policy in practice.
Yes. Together with colleagues from the Copernicus Institute we have set up the Mission-oriented Innovation Policy Observatory. We look at policy examples from all over Europe, including the Netherlands. How are innovation priorities or challenges defined? Can innovation or transformative change be really generated in the direction the policy claims? How inclusive was the mission formulation or agenda setting process: which actors were involved or how were they framed? We want to facilitate a dialogue between theory and practice, to learn and see how we can develop better, more inclusive and targeted policies.
How do you hope your research impacts mission-oriented innovation policy?
I hope that it creates visibility and critical thinking on how to achieve policymaking that’s actually effective in solving societal challenges. I also hope it contributes to innovation policy that is not exclusively technology driven, and instead looks for integrated ways of creating legitimised solutions.
Further reading
Wanzenböck, I., Wesseling, J.H., Frenken, K., Hekkert, M., & Weber, M. (2020). A framework for mission-oriented innovation policy: Alternative pathways through the problem-solution space. Science and Public Policy, 1-16.
Wanzenböck, I. & Frenken, K. (2020). The subsidiarity principle in innovation policy for societal challenges. Global Transitions, 2, 51-59.