Towards a Mission-Oriented Research and Innovation Policy in the European Union An ESIR Memorandum

Rationale behind Focussing on problems, rather than sectors can help rebalance economies that are over-reliant on few sectors and achieve transformational change by identifying and articulating missions that not just can galvanise but also transform production, distribution, and consumption patterns across various sectors in new directions. achieving transformational change by identifying and articulating challenge-led missions that can galvanise innovation while transforming production, distribution and consumption patterns across various sectors

Rationale behind

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

What is a mission-oriented policy (MOP)? The concept of mission-oriented research and innovation has been a fundamental pillar of public programmes in fields such as defence, agriculture and space exploration for decades It does not have a formal definition in the OECD Frascati Manual mission-oriented versus diffusion-oriented: missions creating markets and addressing societal issues while diffusion policies build capacity and improve productivity of firms Identifying missions - selecting missions The selection of missions will involve close interactions between the EC and MS. Do we have interaction between EC and LT? The initial number of missions should be relatively small: 5 to 10. To gain widespread support a portfolio will be needed covering key socio-economic domains.

Mission vs Challenges to be clear, under the definitions used here the aim to put a human on the moon was a challenge and the Apollo Programme was a mission An Outcomes-oriented policy – Set the target from the very start missions represent the more narrowly defined package of activities that will deliver a verifiable result on a planned timescale that represents clear progress against the challenge Framing the missions - Missions of the 21st Century as Europe’s response to global societal challenges Taxonomy of missions: Conceptually the missions addressing the challenges fall into two main categories: Type A) Addressing a challenge which is potentially solvable and can therefore relatively easily be reduced to discrete or verifiable goals. The fundamental nature of the mission is to accelerate change in a set direction; and Type B) Addressing a challenge where solutions are unknown and the problems are ‘wicked’ and escape simple definition – wider societal problems such as sustainability or migration come into this category. The fundamental nature of these missions is to transform an entire economic or socio-technical system.

How will a MOP differ compared to a FP such as H2020 While the implementation of the mission-oriented policy is most effective as a core element across each of the current 3-pillar structure of H2020, the focus on missions should be the bread and butter of the Challenges pillar. Precisely because of the risks involved, the next FP will keep the current variety of R&I policy instruments with a new mission-oriented policy as a federating and structuring force, playing a significant but not overarching role. RSB - Regulatory Scrutiny Board (replaces the Impact Assessment Board)  EPRS - European Parliamentary Research Service

FP9 vision?

Mission example: Mission-Oriented Research & Innovation in the European Union A problem-solving approach to fuel innovation-led growth by Mariana MAZZUCATO

Instruments What instruments for an effective MOP? There should be instruments that: fund the development of new ideas; fund R&I infrastructures and alliances relevant for the mission; fund innovation and incentives for change in organisations, including public sector innovation or empowering of key actors; fund the scale up of demonstrators to Living Labs, allowing firms to elaborate flexible innovative solutions. fund the scaling-up of tested innovative solutions to the Single Market with regulation and standards allowing this swiftly to occur would also be needed.

Governance? Mission-oriented organisations are essential for the governance and implementation of missions. There is a need for agencies or new “programme managers” with specific competences and with some strategic capabilities. In fact, the MOP framework is a move from an ex ante programming to a strategic evaluation process of the projects, acquiring a coherent portfolio of projects, with – once the missions are set – a strong bottom-up emergence of projects – experimental, even local, but potentially to be scaled-up

Budget suggestions: Maintaining or even lowering current investment levels would not address the problem of underfunding. This would have knock-on effects on national and private investment, and undermine efforts to reach the target set by the Europe 2020 strategy of investing 3% of Gross Domestic Product in research and development. The Union would fall further behind compared to the world leaders. Research support to other EU policies would be reduced. An increase in the Framework Programme by 50% to EUR 120 billion would create an estimated additional 420,000 jobs by 2040 and increase Gross Domestic Product by around 0.33% over the same period. This would continue the growing trend of recent EU Research and Innovation budgets and ensure an acceptable share of high-quality proposals funded. It would increase the Union's world-wide attractiveness for leading researchers and tackle weaknesses in innovation and scale-up opportunities. It would support progress on priorities such as digital, energy, climate and health. Doubling the Framework Programme to EUR 160 billion would create an estimated 650,000 jobs by 2040 and add around 0.46% to Gross Domestic Product over the same period. It would enable the EU to emerge as a global leader in large-scale initiatives, preparing full market deployment of solutions in areas like batteries, infectious diseases, smart and clean buildings and vehicles, decarbonisation technologies, circular economy, solutions for plastic waste and connected/automated cars.