Impact Innovation is Sweden’s 10-year national innovation initiative, aimed at accelerating sustainable transitions by mobilising actors across sectors around ambitious societal missions. At a breakfast seminar organised by TIPC member Vinnova, representatives from the five Impact Innovation programmes shared lessons and early reflections from the first two years of their work.
While each programme focuses on a different mission, from water resilience to public sector transformation, the presentations highlighted common themes around systems change, mobilisation, and collaboration across sectors.
Alejandra (Sandra) Boni, Co-Director of the TRIP-EuHub, joined Philippe Larrue from the OECD Mission Action Lab to reflect on the programmes’ progress and share their perspectives as academic and research experts in transformative innovation. Drawing on principles of Transformative Innovation Policy and mission-oriented innovation, they discussed the importance of maintaining a focus on system transformation.
Sandra highlighted the programmes’ systemic understanding of change. Impact innovation strategies perceive the transformation of the system from different angles, as it requires attention to markets, users, societal values, and other dimensions of socio-technical systems.
The discussion explored the role of Transition Labs and other collaborative spaces in bringing together diverse groups of actors to explore possible pathways towards transformation. These spaces can support learning, reflection, and experimentation while helping actors identify potential avenues for change.
The importance of experimentation in transformative innovation was also emphasised. Rather than following a single pathway, programmes need the flexibility to test different approaches and adapt to changing circumstances. Although experimentation might not always produce the expected results, working through uncertainty is part of the process of system transformation.
Watch the recording of the seminar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cytnkJr6SY