This blog describes an action research experiment between TIPC and Sweden’s national innovation agency, Vinnova, to advance sustainable food systems and develop organisational capability for mission-orientated innovation policy. For more on this experiment and its contribution to the Nordic learning hub, visit Vinnova resources. This article is also available as a downloadable PDF.
Key challenges
The problem facing Vinnova was how to design and manage mission-oriented initiatives that could genuinely contribute to system transformation – while also embedding a reflective and co-created evaluation process capable of supporting learning, adaptation and alignment across actors.
This gave rise to a number of organisational challenges:
Integrating theoretical approaches to conceptualise transformative change
Mission-oriented policy was still emerging within the agency and practitioners were experimenting with new approaches to systems change. Staff were interested in drawing on insights from transitions theory and related frameworks to combine with other theoretical approaches and help strengthen their understanding of how missions could influence complex socio-technical systems.
Methodological gaps
Vinnova’s approach to missions was purposefully fluid and design-oriented. Missions were expected to evolve as learning emerged, guided by a shared direction rather than a fixed implementation plan. As a result, practitioners found it challenging to apply a traditional Theory of Change model with clearly defined inputs, outputs and outcomes. Instead, they needed an approach that allowed theories about change to be surfaced, tested and refined in real time.
Evaluating interventions
Traditional public-sector evaluation methods often look backwards, assessing progress against predefined targets. In contrast, transformative missions require ongoing adaptation, continuous learning and the ability to question underlying assumptions – a process sometimes referred to as second-order learning. While some reflective methods already existed within the organisation, practitioners needed ways to adapt these approaches to the context of mission-oriented policy.
Navigating the learning needs of diverse actors and organisations
Mission-oriented initiatives involve multiple organisations and stakeholders working across sectors. A key challenge was how to capture learning across these different actors and ensure insights were shared rather than remaining siloed. This required new approaches to monitoring and reflection that could accommodate evolving activities and produce useful outputs for different audiences – from strategic insights for policymakers to practical guidance for programme managers.
Activities
Over two years, a TIPC core team of action researchers, learning and communications professionals worked in partnership with programme managers, analysts and strategic leads at Vinnova to develop and test a formative evaluation methodology tailored to the agency’s emerging mission-oriented work. Much of the collaboration took place online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Formative evaluation focuses on improving policy design and implementation through continuous learning, reflection and collaboration. Rather than assessing success at the end of a programme, it creates mechanisms for capturing insights during implementation and using them to guide strategic decisions.
Together, the teams co-developed an approach that drew on the concept of Transformative Outcomes – early signals that interventions may be influencing systemic change. These outcomes provide a way to observe how missions contribute to shifts in networks, institutions and practices that support transformation.
The collaboration introduced a reflexive layer to mission activities through the development of monitoring techniques, learning processes and participatory workshops designed to stimulate second-order learning – encouraging participants to question underlying assumptions and reconsider how change happens.
The collaboration unfolded through several phases, supported by documentation, visualisations, journaling and exchanges to capture emerging insights. These were also fed back into the wider TIPC programme, linking the Swedish experience with experiments in other countries and contributing to learning and development across the membership and knowledge community.
Initiation and early framing
The process began with participatory workshops bringing together Vinnova practitioners and TIPC researchers. The first workshop introduced key ideas from Transformative Innovation Policy, including formative evaluation, experimental policy engagement and Transformative Outcomes as tools for reflection and adaptation. Participants explored how these concepts related to their own mission-oriented activities, using Vinnova project examples to analyse system dynamics, identify regime structures and reflect on possible pathways of change.
Co-constructing a transformative theory of change
The team then worked to articulate a shared theory of change for the missions. This involved identifying intended outcomes, clarifying underlying assumptions and discussing possible indicators of system change. The theory of change was construed as a living framework that could evolve as the missions developed, support future evaluation and help guide strategic decision-making.
Implementation and learning architecture
As the project progressed, participants began designing the infrastructure needed to support ongoing learning within the missions. This included a formative evaluation process, creating ‘learning history’ templates and designing tools to collect qualitative data from participants. Learning histories were produced thatdocumented emerging practices, challenges and early signs of transformation.
Reflection and refinement
Through workshops and exchanges, the team reviewed progress and tested emerging insights. Participants reflected on their experiences and revisited the theory of change to incorporate what had been learned so far. Their conclusions helped to refine analytical tools and ensure that the evaluation framework remained aligned with the evolving mission activities.
Deepening learning and data generation
Further rounds of interviews and documentation expanded the evidence base for the evaluation process. The team refined data-collection strategies and improved the learning-history templates to better capture the evolving dynamics of the missions. Visualisations and activity reports were developed to make emerging patterns and insights easier for practitioners to interpret and use.
Synthesis
The collaboration concluded with a series of workshops aimed at consolidating the learning generated through the process. Participants reviewed and agreed upon a visual representation of the mission theory of change and reflected on how the formative evaluation approach could be embedded within Vinnova’sfuture mission-oriented programmes.
Results and impact
The collaboration between Vinnova and the TIPC embedded analytical frameworks, and led to practical frameworks and organisational learning processes to strengthen mission-oriented innovation policy. It highlighted how evaluation can become an integral part of the innovation process, supporting adaptive management and deeper learning within public policy organisations.
- One result was the development of a formative evaluation methodology tailored to mission-oriented policy that helped practitioners track early signals that mission activities might be contributing to broader system change.
- The process also led to the development of a shared theory of change for the mission initiatives. This framework made explicit the assumptions underpinning the missions and identified potential pathways through which activities could contribute to transformation in food and health systems.
- Another outcome was the creation of a learning infrastructure to support reflection across mission activities. Learning histories, interviews and documentation processes captured experiences from the programme managers and partners involved in the missions, providing a structured way to identify patterns, highlight challenges and make sense of complex changes unfolding across multiple projects.
- Participants reported that the collaboration strengthened reflexive capacity within Vinnova. Practitioners became more comfortable interrogating and reflecting critically on their own assumptions about how change happens. This helped reinforce a culture of inquiry and experimentation within the agency’s mission-oriented work.
- The project also contributed to networks and peer learning within the TIP knowledge community. Insights from the Swedish experience informed thinking in other TIPC experiments on approaches to formative evaluation and mission-oriented governance, and led to a Nordic learning hub.
Learnings and reflections
- The collaboration highlighted that designing and managing missions for complex societal challenges requires new approaches to policy learning and evaluation. Traditional models that emphasise fixed plans and predefined outcomes are often ill-suited to initiatives that aim to transform entire socio-technical systems. By integrating monitoring and reflection into everyday programme activities, practitioners were able to identify early signals of change and adjust interventions accordingly. This approach helped shift evaluation from a compliance exercise to a tool for strategic learning.
- One key insight was the importance of creating structured spaces for reflection and dialogue within mission-oriented programmes. These spaces supported second-order learning, enabling participants to question underlying assumptions and reconsider strategies as the missions evolved. Narrative learning historiesand visualisations played important roles in surfacing stories about complex systems change, and in keeping the mission’s direction in view as activities evolved.
- Participants reflected that mission-oriented innovation requires strong coordination across organisations and sectors, but capturing learning across diverse actors is challenging. The project demonstrated that participatory evaluation methods can help build shared ownership of the mission goals and learning process.
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