Mission-oriented approaches in practice: Greater Manchester’s 2038 Carbon Neutral Challenge
By
| @MarthaMcphTo get to a green economic and technological transition, the world needs to focus on the positive and socially equitable opportunities for investment and innovation that stem from the need to mitigate climate change. We have written before about the role that mission-oriented innovation has to play in this green growth agenda, and how missions act to set long-term policy direction, sparking multiple bottom-up experimentation projects amongst a broad, cross-sectoral swathe of innovative actors and crowding in private investment.
Setting, financing, and monitoring green missions requires courageous decision making and intentional project design at all levels: from international decision-making to national action and regional projects. In many areas, states and cities are emerging as green growth catalysts, and civil society support is booming — the ongoing climate strikes by children across the world are testament to this.
At the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), we have been working with cities around the world, from Medellin to London, to support them in developing the missions and dynamic, cross-sectoral interactions that will allow them to shift their economies in a green direction. Most recently, we have been working closely with Greater Manchester, a city region comprised of ten local authorities in the North West of the UK. In January 2019, Greater Manchester started the consultation process on the target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2038, one of the most ambitious targets of any city region in Europe, and 12 years earlier than the previous Greater Manchester goal of 2050.
The technical report entitled A Mission-Oriented Approach to Greater Manchester’s Clean Growth Challenge will be launched as one of a suite of technical reports informing the Greater Manchester Independent Prosperity Review which acts as a key input into GMCA’s Local Industrial Strategy.
IIPP Director Mariana Mazzucato, who was one of the experts invited to sit on the panel for the Review, will be speaking at the London launch of the Greater Manchester Independent Prosperity Review, all about the Greater Manchester Clean Growth challenge, and how mission-oriented innovation can be developed for other cities and regions. The work will also inform the city-region’s 5 Year Environment Plan, which will be launched at the second-ever Greater Manchester Green Summit on March 25th 2019.
IIPP’s task in this technical report was to take the carbon neutrality pledge, and turn it into a roadmap for cross-sectoral mission-oriented innovation. This meant first translating the commitment into a fully-fledged mission. Secondly, we aimed to identify the key willing sectors to support this mission, and the cross-sectoral, bottom-up innovation projects that will bring about green change. We approached these tasks using the comprehensive data and local reports on areas including the natural environment, air quality, competitive regional industries, local innovation landscapes, transit and social equality.
The new mission we crafted is: Carbon neutral living within the Greater Manchester economy by 2038 and aligns with the five key criteria of a mission, initially developed in 2018 by Mazzucato for the European Commission publication titled Mission-Oriented Research and Innovation in the European Union;
- It is bold, and directly recognisable as having societal relevance to everyone who lives in Greater Manchester;
- It is measurable and time bound;
- It is ambitious but realistic, and will encourage innovation along the research and development value chain;
- It is by nature cross-disciplinary, as it is concerned with daily activities rather than sectors; and
- It is open to being addressed by multiple, bottom-up experimental solutions — not least those coming from citizens and communities of citizens referenced in the mission itself.
From this mission, we developed a Mission Roadmap (see below) to outline the cross-sectoral approaches that we recommend crafting between sectors including energy, transit and digital and media; and the bottom-up mission projects which could be designed at local level. It must be noted that these projects are hypothetical, and in reality, projects would ideally emerge from participative co-design processes, reinforcing ‘bottom-up’ engagement as a core principle of mission-oriented innovation.
Supporting cities and regions to develop, implement and demonstrate how mission-oriented approaches to innovation, industrial strategy and investment can bring them to successful clean growth strategies is a core IIPP activity. The institute has worked to develop strong and high-level international networks of experts and practitioners to discuss and share their triumphs and challenges in creating and implementing mission-oriented approaches. Our Commission for Mission-Oriented Innovation and Industrial Strategy (MOIIS) is a vibrant panel of experts from cities and regions around the world who advise local and national governments on embedding missions into policy — you can read here about MOIIS’ high-impact first year.
Our Mission-Oriented Innovation Network (MOIN) brings together public sector actors from around the world to empower them in the pursuit of public-value driven, mission-oriented innovation. Members include the European Space Agency, Innovate UK, Vinnova, the Brazilian Development Bank, Dubai Future Foundation and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti.
Further reading:
- You can read the full reviewers report here
- To read the report titled “A mission-oriented approach to clean growth”, click here.
We are always interested to hear from organisations interested in mission-oriented innovation, in learning-by-doing and in demonstration and implementation projects. For more information about MOIN, please get in touch with IIPP Deputy Director Rainer Kattel: r.kattel@ucl.ac.uk.
Sign up to the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose’s mailing list to hear about our latest research, news and events. You can also follow us on Twitter: @IIPP_UCL.
