As governments worldwide embrace mission-oriented innovation policies - programs designed to tackle major societal problems such as climate change, health crises, or inequality - they increasingly rely on so-called mission arenas: collaborative platforms bringing together public agencies, researchers, companies, and citizens.

A new study from the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) reveals that while these arenas aim to coordinate broad and inclusive problem-solving, their internal structures may unintentionally narrow their focus. The research shows that the very organisation of these arenas - how meetings are held, how goals are defined, and who is invited to participate - tends to steer attention toward national or sector-wide perspectives, rather than regional challenges and solutions.

"Mission arenas are designed to encourage collaborative innovation and learning," says John-Erik Bergkvist, researcher at the House of Innovation, Stockholm School of Economics, and lead author of the study. "But in practice, when organising for big and abstract goals, shifting attention to local specificities can unintentionally be more difficult. This means that attention to regional needs - where many of the real opportunities for experimentation and impact actually lie - risk being crowded out".

When collaboration structures limit flexibility

The researchers conducted an in-depth study of four publicly funded Swedish mission arenas working in areas such as cancer prevention, antibiotic resistance, elderly nutrition, and health informatics. Despite their shared aim of transforming public health systems, and important advances made, the study found that their internal organisation - what the authors call "attention-regulating structures" - had a major influence on where time and resources were directed.

Four typical organisational patterns emerged:

• Pilot testing, focusing narrowly on small local experiments;
• Social informing, spreading information but with little room for local adaptation;
• Best-practice showcasing, highlighting single successful cases for others to imitate; and
• Network marketing, prioritising brand visibility and connections at a national level.

While each pattern had strengths, they all tended to reduce attention to region-specific conditions. Over time, regional actors often became passive recipients rather than active co-creators of solutions.

"Attention is a scarce resource," explains Professor Karl Wennberg from the Department of Management and Organization at SSE. "Even in large collaborations, it gets channelled through organisational routines - meetings, reports, communication channels. Our findings show that these routines often make it harder to stay open to diverse regional perspectives".

A challenge for innovation policy

The study's findings challenge a key assumption behind mission-oriented policies - that bringing more actors together automatically broadens perspectives and leads to better solutions. Instead, the researchers show that attention in complex collaborations tends to become selective, with some issues - often regional or local ones - pushed to the background.

This insight carries important implications for policymakers and innovation agencies such as Sweden's Vinnova, which funded the mission arenas studied. If national missions are to succeed, the authors argue, they must actively design organisational models that sustain both broad and flexible attention - ensuring that alternative problems and solutions remain possible to identify over time.

"Effective missions require constant adjustment," says Anna Essén, professor at the House of Innovation at SSE. "Our study shows that innovation policy principals shouldn’t only ask what problems to solve, but also how attention is structured in the process. Otherwise, we risk missing the very places where change can take root".

Broad missions, local realities

As mission-driven innovation continues to grow in popularity across Europe, the researchers hope their work will help shape more open and decentralised approaches. They propose that policy designers treat "attention" as a key design variable - one that can determine whether missions succeed in connecting with the diverse realities they aim to transform.

"Our results are a reminder that big missions are realised through human beings with limited attention," says Bergkvist. "Local-specific factors are not obstacles to innovation - they can be the source(s) from which solutions are born".

Photo: Astra Zeneca