1 In times marked by crises and major environmental and societal upheavals, the intervention of public actors to stimulate and support the innovations of tomorrow seems crucial. However, such an intervention raises a series of questions, the primary one being: how should society deal with the Grand Challenges it is facing?

2 Grand Challenges are societal problems often described as “wicked problems” (Rittel, Weber, 1973), that are complex and difficult to predict: global warming, the protection of biodiversity, health issues (e.g. pandemics), and the ageing of populations are just a few examples. These challenges are characterised by significant implications, unknown solutions, and intertwined and evolving technical and social interactions (Eisenhardt et al., 2016, p. 1115). They most often require us to explore solutions via different disciplines and to solve technical and societal issues at the same time (Ferraro et al., 2015). By their very nature, major societal challenges resist easy solutions, which can sometimes contribute to reinforcing their degree of complexity and marginalising certain stakeholders.

3 The second question involves the direction of innovations. Should public decision-makers leave this to market mechanisms, or should they guide and/or lead the major innovations of tomorrow (see Foray, 2024)? According to the latter perspective, public policies should not only fill market gaps but anticipate and shape new markets and sectors. This leads to a vision of a pro-active or entrepreneurial state (Mazzucato, 2016). More broadly, academic and political actors are warning about the need to develop new types of policies and tools in this area and even to move towards a radical transition of all socio-technical systems, involving significant changes in infrastructures, industry structures, regulations, and user behaviours (Schot, Steinmueller, 2018). The very nature of the processes at work is also being questioned. In a growing number of fields, encouraging scientific and technological innovations is becoming increasingly difficult, as the societal dimension of these innovations must also be taken into account (Boutillier et al., 2020; Debref et al., 2022).

4 The aim of this article is to shed light on some of these crucial and complex issues. The first section is dedicated to mission-oriented policies for ecological and digital/AI transitions. In the second section, we explore new types of innovation policies, such as the “small-wins” approach, formulated and implemented locally and focusing on procedural aspects, and discuss the extent to which they are considered complementary to mission-oriented policies.

Mission-Oriented Policies

5 Given major societal challenges such as climate change and the ecological transition, policy responses are proving difficult, and often biased and unproductive (including assessments by mainstream scholars such as Nordhaus, 2015). Consequently, many researchers are calling for a renewal of innovation policies and more of a voice in the transformative innovation policy literature (Mazzucato, 2016; Mazzucato, Semeniuk, 2018). This approach assigns a key role to government and public agencies in setting the direction of tomorrow’s major innovations and in implementing research programmes. A common belief is that private interests – alone and through markets – cannot tackle major societal challenges, as they lack the breadth of vision and the capacity to deal with radical uncertainty that only states have [1].

Mission-Oriented Policy Versus Procedural and Local Approaches

21 While the discussion on mission-oriented policies is flourishing and likely to continue, other attempts to transform the governance of public innovation policies are worth mentioning, even if they are implemented at the local/regional level. One potential direction for the future could be national mission-oriented policies supplemented by local policies led by innovative policy governance.

22 In general, local approaches tend to focus more on the processes than on the overall objectives. Policy and governance are considered more as procedural tools than as substantive tools. In other words, policies zoom in more on the rules, the practices, the interactions and learning than on the results [5]. For example, Kuhlmann et al. (2019) argue in favour of the concept of “tentative policy governance”, which represents “provisional, flexible, revisable, dynamic and open approaches to governance that include experimentation, learning, reflexivity and reversibility” (Kuhlmann et al ., 2019, p. 1091). According to this viewpoint, innovation policy should concentrate on tending to provisional responses, including stakeholders in the process, demonstrating reflexivity and the ability to easily change rules (Kuhlmann, Rip, 2018; Liotard, Revest, 2024). To this end, it seems necessary and vital to stimulate the building of capacities and skills among the players involved in managing challenges, enabling them to analyse and adapt quickly to new contexts or environments. For other scholars on governance, public decision-makers should focus more on managing conflicts than on trying to resolve them, with the aim to achieve coherent actions but not necessarily provide final solutions (Head, 2019). Another path involves fragmenting major issues into more manageable challenges (Head, 2019). Building networks of organisations and stakeholders capable of adapting quickly would be an additional resource (Klijn, Koppenjan, 2015). This would involve working in collective processes of learning, exploration, and experimentation, which could be effective in stimulating collaborative behaviour, reducing potential conflicts between stakeholders, and building trust.

23 A final direction which we want to underscore in particular combines both procedural and local perspectives. Here, regional approaches to innovation policies are associated with the “small-wins” concept (Bours et al., 2022; Morisson et al., 2023). “A small-wins governance strategy follows a logic of stimulating distributed innovation efforts to foster gradual, yet in-depth change in a desired direction” (Bours et al., 2022, p. 2246). Governance in terms of small wins can complement regional innovation systems. Yet, instead of focusing on the structural arrangements of regional players, as is usually the case, a small-wins strategy targets processes and mechanisms that can potentially transform existing system configurations. In other words, a small-wins perspective could lead policies based on regional innovation systems to adopt a Grand Challenges perspective (Tödtling, Auer, 2021). Small wins generally emerge from a wide variety of bottom-up initiatives, rooted in local contexts. They are based on the assumption that actions that start from the ground up, even on a small scale, are often more transformative than more global, centralised measures in response to specific contexts: environmental, social, and political (Von Wirth et al., 2019). According to this perspective, the dynamics of change stem from the initiative of stakeholders, different interest groups, civil society, or the public sector (Termeer, Dewulf, 2019). This avenue thus highlights the role of local niches as “life-size tests” for multi-dimensional change dynamics.

24 Small wins include technical, social and institutional innovations. The experiences gained can then help to extend and diffuse to other places, through appropriate derived policies, standards or regulations (Wanzenböck et al., 2020). To identify small wins, Termeer and Dewulf (2019) highlight four properties: (i) governance must lead to concrete and visible results; (ii) it must affect current practices and, therefore, routines, beliefs, and values; (iii) it should operate on a local or regional scale; and (iv) it should be beneficial to a group of actors without worsening the position of opponents. Following this perspective, Bours et al. (2022) study bottom-up initiatives in the Netherlands to move towards plastic-free waterways. This issue can be conceived as a Grand Challenge: combating plastic pollution, while integrating a regional policy dimension. The authors identified 17 bottom-up initiatives to fight against plastic pollution of waterways between 2012 and 2017 in the Netherlands. These initiatives fulfilled the four properties of small wins mentioned previously (concrete outcome, moderate importance, in-depth change and judged positively) [6]. Another example of the small-wins approach comes from urban policies research. Von Wirth et al. (2019) compared initiatives in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and Malmö (Sweden) to regenerate cities. One initiative was the BlueCityLab in Rotterdam, which represents a platform for the circular economy, developing innovative approaches to stimulate material flows, providing spaces for co-creation, hosting events (waste free), and offering a space for experimentation. This type of laboratory is used to experiment how a city could move towards zero waste and recycled materials. More generally, living labs can serve as active sites for experimentation and the emergence of new knowledge and as places for testing the viability of solutions. The strategies mobilised and implemented can in turn help to spread more sustainable value structures and cultures and illustrate different ways of innovating.

25 These concrete examples highlight the interest in small-wins practices that can arise at the local level in meeting, at least partly, some dimensions of societal challenges. One issue would be determining whether a local approach such as small wins is complementary or alternative to mission-oriented policies. According to Bours et al. (2022, p. 2246), however, this follows an opposite logic: “instead of aiming for ‘big wins’ through radical innovation in science and industry, as common in the discourse of innovation missions (Mazzucato, 2018), [a] small-wins governance strategy follows a logic of stimulating distributed innovation efforts to foster gradual, yet in-depth, change in a desired direction”. In our view, the two approaches could be considered – and mobilised – in a complementary way, under certain conditions. First, these forms of governance should not be considered at the same level of analysis. The policies emerging from the mission-oriented approach should provide the broad (macro) directions for tomorrow’s innovations, while local policies (small wins) should enable experimentation (micro). Second, at certain times, the focus should be on mission-oriented policies and, at other times, on processes and innovative practices. One thing, however, remains certain: as Grand Challenges are complex and changing, innovation governance policy should continually adapt and demonstrate imagination and creativity.

Conclusion

26 This article aimed to illuminate promising directions for addressing the major societal challenges we currently face. The first avenue explored refers to the now well-established mission-oriented approach in the context of two major challenges: ecological transition and the disruption generated by artificial intelligence development and digital transformation. In the first case, several experiences – particularly in energy-related domains – highlight the positive impact of partnerships between public actors (including public investment banks) and large public enterprises in initiating new energy resource proposals from a sustainable perspective. Such partnerships enable the advancement of emerging technologies that are not yet mature enough to attract private sector interest but which hold significant promise. In the second case, the presence of public actors also appears advantageous, as AI can represent both a source of wicked problems and offer processes to solve wicked problems. For example, supporting and facilitating the emergence of AI startups in France is part of a public policy strategy implemented for 2030, which is beginning to bear fruit.

27 The second direction is of a different nature: it involves reflection on local and procedural approaches to public innovation policies. How can innovation policies with societal aims be effectively implemented in practice? The proposed responses differ from the previously mentioned mission-oriented policies by highlighting the implementation (procedures) at the local level of actions that generate changes in agreement with stakeholders. The practices of “small wins” found in various European countries thus appear to be a promising path as they allow for inclusivity, adaptability, and reflexivity. Ultimately, the two approaches prove complementary and could be deployed across multiple levels and in various forms. As societal challenges are varied and complex, the response deserves to be commensurate.

Presentation Of the Special Issue

28 The articles in this special issue examine certain issues from different angles and deal with some examples, in an effort to improve understanding. Julia Werneth, Christian Von Deimling and Michaël Eßig focus on innovation contests as a potential tool for public procurement. First, they propose a literature-based distinction of challenges from other policy instruments to shed light on their particularities, such as the task’s openness, the degree of elaboration of the solution, or the incentives system. Second, they conduct a case study of two German organisations: KOINNO (Competence Center Innovative Procurement) and SPRIN-D (Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation). They selected these companies for their distinct roles in organising and participating in innovation contests in the public sector. Through expert interviews and document analysis, the authors research the specific characteristics, processes, and key success factors of challenges, including motivation, task specificity, degree of elaboration, and organisational structure. Identification of the success factors for challenges in public procurement can provide valuable insights and guidance for practitioners and serve as an ideal process model for administering innovation contests in the public sector.

29 The article by Cristina Chaminade, Clara Dallaire, and Ellen Hillbom deals with the transformative capacities of nation-states in responding to global environmental challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. In the face of these crises, states must develop transformative capacity that enables them to initiate, support, and manage sustainable changes. However, the relationship between innovation policy and transformative capacity remains poorly understood. The article presents a conceptual approach, based on a systematic literature review, to analyse how innovation policies can support states in this transformation. The authors highlight three key dimensions: capacity broadening (co-creation of visions), deepening (profound institutional changes), and governance (proactive adaptation). The proposed framework evaluates the policy implications for each phase of transformation, including stabilisation. The authors conclude by emphasising the importance of a dynamic, holistic, and ongoing perspective that integrates policies tailored to each stage to achieve sustainable transformations.

30 The third article from Nathalie Lazaric, Loubna Echajari, and Dorota Leszczynska deals with potential changes to organisational routines in the face of Grand Challenges to reduce pesticide use. The authors address the following question: How do sustainability issues create opportunities and challenges that question both the actions and patterns promoting a multiplicity of paths? Their findings are based on a qualitative case study in the Bordeaux winemaking region between 2018 and 2019. The study relies on data collected from 17 winemakers, some of whom were more inclined to continue with traditional (i.e., unsustainable) routines and others who were keen on experimenting with more sustainable methods. New public policies call for a deeper engagement of policy-makers and public actors to evaluate current routines. Reflection – anticipatory, collective and critical – is a structural component that can induce the emergence of new patterns aligned with sustainable practices.

31 Finally, the Syllogism proposed by Matthias Weber deepens our analysis by highlighting both strengths and obstacles confronting a transformative innovation policy framework. The article examines different strands within this paradigm while reassessing key critiques – whether regarding market principles, governmental and market failures, or coordination-related transaction costs inherent to transformative governance. The author contends that several criticisms can be dismissed as they fail to account for contemporary political discourse and the intrinsic nature of major societal challenges. Other concerns, particularly those addressing governance modalities, could be mitigated through diversified approaches operating across national, regional, and sectoral dimensions. This multi-level strategy would acknowledge the inherent character of innovation activities while fostering greater adaptability and transformative potential.