Mission-based innovation and Systemic design

What is mission-based innovation?

The 21st century is characterised by complex challenges, such as the climate emergency, which call for intelligent, cross-cutting design responses. A mission is a targeted and pragmatic way of addressing those challenges. Mission-based innovation is characterised by actors from multiple sectors coming together to co-create novel solutions and push for change within a framework typically set by Government.

For Designing London’s Recovery, the programme Partners wanted to use the mission-based innovation format to address challenges that had emerged across London after the Covid-19 pandemic. The aim was to explore new ways for designers and innovators to engage with systemic challenges and shift behavioural patterns and mindsets. Framing innovation as a collective endeavour represented a move away from the less systemic, and more isolated, type of design interventions typically promoted through traditional challenge programmes.

According to Theo Blackwell, Chief Digital Officer at the Greater London Authority, approaching innovation in this way yields tangible benefits to the public sector. As he stated, “Working with experts in open innovation (such as the Design Council) enables challenges set by City Hall to be opened up to London’s innovators, and to support them to develop their ideas in a design-led, iterative way, which is often beyond the current capabilities of the public sector.”