The 21st century is becoming increasingly defined by the need to respond to the major issues or ‘grand challenges’ facing humanity, such as climate change. The UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), under the directorship of Professor Mariana Mazzucato, seeks to rethink the role of the state in addressing these existential challenges, which markets alone will not be able to solve. The IIPP believes that finding solutions to grand challenges will require deep, purposeful collaboration between all societal actors.

Innovation is the key to unlocking these challenges and the concept of mission-oriented innovation calls on governments and policy-makers globally to ambitiously and purposefully set the direction of innovation for public value to meet the tasks at hand.

This casebook is a compilation of stories documenting mission-oriented innovation in practice from members of the Mission-Oriented Innovation Network (MOIN). MOIN is a learning community focused on purpose-driven policy and mission-oriented innovation within public bodies globally. Supported with a foundational grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the IIPP launched MOIN in 2017 to drive a research and policy agenda for shaping and co-creating markets with public purpose.