Anticipatory governance supports mission-oriented innovation policy by identifying, mitigating, and preparing for barriers that impede socio-technical transformations. While recent research introduced the Mission-Oriented Transition Assessment as a formative approach to mission governance, we insufficiently understand how this approach helps govern missions over a sustained period. This study applies a ‘real-time’ Mission-Oriented Transition Assessment to yield longitudinal insights into how mission barriers are foreseen, constructed, and responded to by stakeholders. We do so in the context of the Dutch maritime mission ‘Climate neutral shipping by 2050′. The results of 14 assessments over a period of 1.5 years with 124 stakeholder representatives show how 19 mission barriers are collectively anticipated, explicated, and acted upon. As such, this paper conceptualizes and empirically explores the usefulness of a ‘real-time’ Mission-Oriented Transition Assessment as a formative approach to anticipatory mission governance.

As global water scarcity worsens, potable water reuse is increasingly considered a vital solution for augmenting water supplies. However, public acceptance remains a significant barrier, presumably because of a misalignment between the public values reflected by these systems and those that are held by the communities that these systems intend to serve. This study explores this potential misalignment by systematically identifying and analysing the most prevalent values inscribed in academic research on potable water reuse. We employ a mixed-methods approach, combining probabilistic topic modelling with thematic analysis of 2940 academic publications to identify and conceptualise latent values discussed in the literature. Our findings suggest that the values ‘reliability’, ‘sustainability’, ‘health’, and ‘safety’ are most prevalent but that their conceptualisation remains largely ambivalent. For example, sustainability exhibits an ambivalent relationship with safety, sometimes conflicting and sometimes supporting, depending on the research perspective. Crucially, this research demonstrates a predominantly technocentric understanding of these values. While this technical focus is undeniably important, it also risks overlooking broader societal concerns and other value interpretations. This research highlights the need for a more value-sensitive approach to ensure a more responsible potable water reuse, incorporating a wider range of public values to promote the system’s social and ethical desirability.

While most innovations are developed in organizations, there is a wide-spread consensus that the organizational institutionalization of Responsible (Research and) Innovation is limited. This may partly be the case because we lack an understanding of what factors drive or impede the institutionalization of such responsibility-related changes and how they interact. In this paper, we draw from various institutional entrepreneurs’ experiences, who worked within eight organizational change labs, to explore the dynamic institutionalization of Responsible (Research and) Innovation. Our study identifies 29 factors highlighting some of the intricate, dynamic, and ‘messy’ complexities found in organizations. We conclude by offering some reflections on the role of institutional entrepreneurship for Responsible (Research and) Innovation.

The recent mission-oriented discourse in innovation policy increasingly recognizes the need for participatory, anticipatory, reflexive, and tentative governance modes to address the wickedness associated with societal challenges. In this paper, we introduce the Mission-Oriented Transition Assessment (MOTA) approach as a novel way to collectively anticipate and reflect upon current and future mission-oriented transition dynamics, and we subsequently demonstrate this approach in the context of the Dutch mission ‘Circular infrastructure by 2050’. Using socio-technical scenarios, we apply MOTA to support stakeholders, particularly policymakers, in governing missions. Stakeholders reflect on their role in transitions to collectively find ways to overcome transition barriers and address tensions between the current and future socio-technical systems. Results indicate various ways in which MOTA contributes to stakeholders' awareness and preparedness, as well as the social robustness and alignment of action perspectives in the transition towards a circular infrastructure sector. As such, MOTA helps reveal valuable strategic and actionable insights to better understand and address societal challenges and mission barriers.

The uptake of transformative mission-oriented innovation policies has coincided with explicit calls to better understand their justice implications. Our qualitative meta-analysis addresses this ‘justice deficit’ by identifying, synthesizing, and reinterpreting empirical findings of 26 justice-related case studies that collectively draw from 1569 data points, and which pertain to the mission context of the German Energiewende. We review observations linked to four justice tenets (e.g., distributive justice) across four policy arenas of the mission (e.g., programmatic arena). The results reveal some of the multi-scalar, multi-spatial, and multi-temporal ways through which injustices are conduced and addressed. We argue that injustices should not be treated as apolitical side effects of ‘neutral’ missions but rather viewed as symptomatic of contested policymaking processes.

Transformative mission-oriented innovation policy aims to redirect innovation, but evidence of this directional ability is limited. This paper examines whether transformer missions redirect values reflected by mission-oriented projects. We study the EU Mission ‘Restore our Ocean and Waters’ and use probabilistic topic modelling and thematic analyses to identify, conceptualize, and compare latent values described in 17 policy documents (i.e., strategic layer), 37 mission-oriented projects, and 809 mission-relevant projects (i.e., operational layer). We map how these values changed during the mission launch. The results of this study are ambivalent. On the one hand, the mission launch corresponds with an increase of funded projects of which mission-oriented projects commonly frame efforts towards mission objectives. On the other hand, there is a misalignment between policy and project-level values while the prevalence of project-level values remained largely unaffected by the mission. These mixed results provide a more nuanced understanding of transformer missions’ directional abilities.

Governance lies at the heart of instigating, steering, and creating the conditions for mission-oriented transitions that potentially help resolve some of our grand societal challenges. In doing so, policymakers will need to navigate both epistemic and normative considerations to develop, implement, and evaluate missions responsibly. A number of scholars have therefore expressed the need for a better conceptualization of responsible mission governance as a procedural approach, particularly with the aim of coping with the complexity, uncertainty, and contestation that render these wicked problems intractable. In this paper we develop an integrative framework for responsible mission governance by taking wickedness dimensions as our entry point. Accordingly, we argue that responsible mission governance should integrate various complementary governance responsibilities (e.g., reflexivity) and modes (e.g., reflexive governance) that potentially improve the effectiveness and desirability of missions.

European research funding organizations (RFOs) are increasingly experimenting with public engagement in their funding activities. This case study draws attention to the challenges they face in preparing, implementing, and evaluating ethical public engagement in the context of setting funding priorities, formulating calls for proposals, and evaluating project proposals. We discuss challenges related to seven themes: (1) recruiting participants; (2) commitments and expectations; (3) meaningful dialogue and equal engagement; (4) accommodating vulnerability; (5) funding call formulations; (6) lack of expertise in engagement ethics; and (7) uncertainty, resource constraints, and external factors. To address these challenges, we propose the following seven interventions: (1) developing comprehensive recruitment strategies with experienced recruiters and community organizations; (2) establishing clear communication of roles, expectations, and outcomes through codes of conduct; (3) training mediators to address power imbalances; (4) designing flexible engagement methods and providing tailored support; (5) implementing collaborative feedback loops for inclusive funding call formulation; (6) enhancing ethical standards through internal expertise and external advisory inputs; and (7) developing adaptive strategies for flexible and ethical public engagement. These recommendations emphasize the need for context-adaptive insights to support funding organizations to implement ethical public engagement activities, even when faced with organizational constraints and a lack of ethical expertise.

Responsible Research and Innovation and Responsible Innovation, as academic endeavours, have grown substantially since their birth in the previous decades. They have been used as synonyms on a structural basis, and both concepts have been studied from various disciplinary backgrounds. This paper identifies Responsible Research and Innovation's and Responsible Innovation's shared research topics, knowledge base, and academic organisation as a common ground for scholars to further their individual or joint research. It does so by conducting a keyword analysis and a collaboration analysis, combined with a reference analysis of their academic literature. This paper discusses the most influential references in chronological order and sheds light on the accumulation of knowledge. The results suggest that Responsible Research and Innovation and Responsible Innovation have matured into an increasingly cumulative and interconnected research trajectory following the footsteps of similar, more mature research areas.