Governments are launching ambitious innovation policies to tackle complex societal challenges like climate change, but these policies are failing more often than they should—and no one has systematically studied why. The problem is that mission-oriented innovation policies (MOIPs) are uncertain, multi-level, and complex, which makes them especially prone to failure. When they fail, public money is wasted and trust in government erodes. Yet the specific risks that cause these failures—and how to manage them—have never been analysed in this context. This research fills that gap by examining MOIP initiatives with sustainability goals in the UK, Poland, and Canada. If successful, the project will produce a practical framework for identifying and mitigating policy failure risks before they derail major initiatives. This could mean more effective public spending on climate and sustainability programmes, fewer abandoned projects, and stronger public confidence in government’s ability to deliver on its promises. The findings will help policymakers choose the right risk management approach—whether precautionary, discursive, or governance-based—for each situation, reducing the likelihood that ambitious innovation policies collapse under their own complexity.
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Mission oriented innovation policies (MOIP) are a new generation of transformative policies aimed at fostering innovations that help address complex societal challenges. The uncertain, multilevel, and complex character of MOIP exacerbates the risk of policy failure, i.e., the risk of the policies not delivering their intended goals, leading to ineffective policy support and growing distrust towards governments. Despite this increased propensity for potential risk of policy failure, the nature of these risks and the appropriate approaches to mitigate them have not been analysed in the context of MOIP. Within a conceptual framework built upon risk governance and public policy research, we analyse policy failure risks in the design and implementation of MOIP and identify suitable risk governance approaches to address them. To do so we analyse specific MOIP initiatives with sustainability related goals in three selected countries (United Kingdom, Poland and Canada) using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (to identify necessary and/or sufficient links through systematic cross-case comparison) and Process Tracing (to construct key causal mechanisms at the within-case level). Based upon a review of the literature, we hypothesise that policy failure risks will originate through a lack of public actors' capabilities, internal and external coordination problems, stakeholders' motivations and incentive issues, and problems in the management and implementation of programmes. We also identify which risk management approach (risk informed, precautionary, cautionary, discursive and risk governance) is more appropriate for their mitigation. The research contributes to a better understanding of MOIP failure risks and their governance, which can in turn help reduce policy failure and increase levels of trust in institutions and public authorities.
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