Policymakers lack sufficient information to design mission-oriented innovation

The case studies in the volume suggest that policymakers rarely have the information needed to design missions effectively and efficiently. For example, in the 1970s cancer research was still relatively undeveloped by today's standards, making it virtually impossible to achieve the goals set by the mission (as pointed out by leading cancer researchers). Lucas and Boudreaux (2024) give another example where politicians continued to spend large sums on a mission related to homelessness that missed its targets early on. This underlines that many of the problems and difficulties associated with– ever so well-intentioned– missions are often discovered only after they have been attempted. Even people with a genuine desire to improve the world have limited knowledge and skills.

In line with this argument, Waldron and Coyne's (2024) contribution is a good illustration of the knowledge problem associated with political governance and missions. Using Mazzucato's principles as a frame of reference, the authors show how difficult it is to succeed in aid-related missions without sufficient information and feedback, which can easily lead to unintended consequences. In the worst-case scenario, missions can do more harm than good. André Alves's (2024) study of the Brazilian government's mission to create a thriving domestic shipbuilding industry provides another illustrative example of a failed mission where the politicians involved did not understand that the domestic industry lacked the necessary competencies and conditions to succeed.

The arguments are not really new. In 2011, reflecting on his 1977 book on missions, Nelson emphasised that a key argument of the book was still valid, namely that the lack of knowledge to make informed decisions “was not so much political as a consequence of the fact that, given existing knowledge, there were no clear paths to a solution” (Nelson, 2011, p. 685). The basic problem is simply that relevant knowledge is often lacking to enable the intended goal to be achieved through state-initiated missions.