Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A funding call structured around Horizon Europe's cancer mission, inviting proposals from oncology, public health, data science, and behavioural science groups jointly, rather than a single-discipline call.
- Is an instance
A national research strategy setting a specific, dated target (for example, a defined reduction in a named disease's incidence by a set year) and funding cross-disciplinary teams against that target rather than against a discipline-based budget line.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
An open-ended, curiosity-driven basic-research grant with no defined societal target or timeline is not mission-oriented research in this sense, even where it may eventually produce societal benefit.
Editorial commentary
Mission-oriented research framing was popularised by economist Mariana Mazzucato’s report ‘Mission-Oriented Research and Innovation in the European Union’ (2018), commissioned by the European Commission, and her broader ‘Mission Economy’ work that followed. Missions are characterised by being bold and inspirational, measurable against clear targets, time-bound, broad in scope, and interdisciplinary — deliberately inviting solutions from multiple fields and sectors rather than prescribing a single research pathway, and inviting bottom-up proposals for how the mission should be achieved rather than a top-down technical specification.
Adoption in EU funding policy
The European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme adopted five missions as an organising structure for a portion of its funding: cancer, climate adaptation, healthy oceans/seas/waters, climate-neutral and smart cities, and soil health. Each mission funds a portfolio of interdisciplinary projects judged against the mission’s specific, dated targets, rather than against a conventional single-discipline peer-review panel structure alone.
Relationship to RRI and the SDGs
Mission-oriented research overlaps significantly with SDG-aligned research and with Responsible Research and Innovation, since all three orient research toward societal benefit rather than discipline-internal goals, but mission-oriented framing is distinguished by its emphasis on explicit, measurable, time-bound goals and accountability against them — rather than only thematic alignment with a broader agenda, which is the more common criticism levelled at looser SDG-mapping exercises.
References
- Mazzucato M, ‘Mission-Oriented Research and Innovation in the European Union,’ European Commission, 2018. Mazzucato M, ‘Mission Economy,’ 2021. Horizon Europe Missions documentation.
Also known as
Mission-oriented innovation · Mission research
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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