About MOIN

Learn more about the Mission-Oriented Innovation Network (MOIN)

UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) is excited to host a global network of organisations with the aim of empowering them in the pursuit of public-value driven innovation.

What is MOIN?

Mission-Oriented Innovation Network (MOIN)
IIPP has developed a partnership programme, Mission-Oriented Innovation Network (MOIN), with global policy-makers to explore how mission-oriented innovation policies can tackle grand challenges. ‘Moin’ means ‘hello’ in many Northern European languages. The acronym sums up the network as one which interlinks peers who learn from each other. Partners will help to shape the strategic direction of the network as well as be key funders of its activities.
MOIN launched on March 12th 2018, and offers a unique opportunity for partners to learn from like-minded organisations from diverse backgrounds, with the aim of empowering them in the pursuit of public value driven innovations. For more information, and a full list of the founding partners of MOIN, visit the page on the partnerships section of our website.
MOIN brings together over 75 leading global policy-making institutions — including state investment banks, innovation agencies, and sectoral units setting the strategic direction of governments — as well as private organisations interested in public purpose, to share the challenges and opportunities they face when trying to create and nurture public value

MOIN’s goals

The network is creating and evaluating a new policy-making framework that is able to justify, nurture and evaluate policies that actively shape and create markets — not only ‘fix’ them.
MOIN provides an organisational dimension to mission-oriented policies, focussing on how public organisations can create and nurture the dynamic capabilities needed for tackling the grand challenges of our time.

Key outputs of MOIN

The network’s key output will be a peer-learning platform and a new policy toolkit focussed on the development of the capabilities needed to nurture collaborations across the economy which can drive innovation across society-wide missions.
The network’s methodology is based on co-creation between policy actors (MOIN members) and academic research, where policy implementation and capacity is not an afterthought but key to the research process itself.

MOIN and the ROAR framework*

The network is developed under a new theoretical and practical framework, ROAR, that enables MOIN members to envision, justify, measure and assess public investments.
The framework gives the network a theoretical and practical anchor that allows it to operationalise concrete activities for mission-oriented organisations.

The ROAR framework addresses four essential pillars:

Routes and directions

This pillar is about 'directionality'. How to overcome the fear of ‘picking winners’, focussing the question not on whether to ‘pick’ but on how to make strategic choices around societal and technological missions, which can ‘tilt’ the playing field around transformative change across many sectors.

Organisational capacity

How to build the type of public sector institutions that welcome the fundamental uncertainty—and hence risk-taking—inherent in the innovation process, becoming learning institutions. This pillar is about viewing ‘policy as process’ and building learning organisations to engage in that process.

Assesment and evaluation

How to develop new tools to measure and assess the dynamic impact of different types of public policies that aim to create markets, not only fix them. This pillar is about building a dynamic approach to the assessment of policies to replace, or at times complement, the more static cost-benefit approaches.

Risks and rewards

How to develop mechanisms so that the public and private sectors share the risks and also the rewards. This pillar is about thinking of ways to allow smart, innovation-led growth to also be inclusive growth.

*The ROAR framework has been developed by Mariana Mazzucato, for further details, see Mazzucato, M. (2016) "From Market Fixing to Market-Creating: A new framework for innovation policy", Industry and Innovation, and IIPP first working paper Mission-Oriented Innovation Policy: Challenges and Opportunities

Joining MOIN

If your organisation is interested in joining MOIN, please read the network's Terms of Reference and submit a completed Application Form to n.clinton@ucl.ac.uk for review by the MOIN team.

MOIN supporters

The network is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and forms a key policy engagement platform for EU Horizon2020 project on Growth Welfare Innovation Productivity (Growinpro).
MOIN is the focal point for IIPP’s collaboration with the OECD.