Our approach to mission-based innovation

The programme combined some of the core principles of mission-based innovation; direction from Government, co-design between innovators, and cross-sectoral experimentation, with the Design Council’s own approach to systemic design. We developed three guiding principles for how to take a design-led approach to mission-based innovation. They were:

Develop groups of ideas, not individual designs.

We wanted the programme to explore ways for multiple ideas to come into contact with each other to support open-ended forms of innovation and generate opportunities for lasting change.

Focus on collective impact, not individual designers.

While the programme did support individual teams, the emphasis was on enabling designers to come together as a peer group to exchange tactics and insights, and collectively drive innovation and societal transformation.

Shift systems, not units.

We wanted the programme to support scaling of innovations and behaviours to other places. However, we reframed ‘scaling’ as a way to enable multiple ideas to come into contact and take inspiration from each other, to better interrogate existing practice and enable systemic change, rather than simply increase the return on investment or the number of units sold.

These principles were embedded in the support we provided to the participating teams.

Traditional Innovation Support

Individual organisations working in competition with each other

Lots of ideas funnelled down to a few ideas

Focusing on your idea only

Mission-led Support

A portfolio of ideas that can generate a change movement

Organisations working together as a cohort or ecosystem

Thinking about how your idea can connect with others to shift the wider system