Skip to content
An official website of the OECD. Find out more

This blog is part of a series introducing the OECD Mission Action Lab (MAL), an initiative supporting countries to turn mission-oriented innovation into action. Find out more about the OECD Mission Action Lab or contact us at [email protected]. The Unevenly Distributed Future Picture two mules and a wooden wagon right next to a space rocket. Now picture a world in which the richest 1% have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people,...
Individualised cancer care, better screening, translational research and improved treatment: countries across the EU are on a mission to beat cancer. In 2019, Sweden launched Vision Zero Cancer, a national mission to combat cancer. It relies on mission-oriented innovation, a policy approach that engages stakeholders and citizens across disciplines and sectors to define the actions and strategies required to achieve this goal. The mission is financially supported by the Swedish Innovation Agency,…
Blog

2021: A Year in Review at OPSI

2021 was yet another busy year at OPSI! As the rate and complexity of global challenges increases, so does our work. In cooperation with partners and counterparts, we complete another successful year of leveraging our expertise in global trends, public sector innovation systems, transformative technology and innovation skills, processes and methods. We held over 50 workshops, webinars and events Issued 13 reports Published 46 blogs And held hundreds meetings to drive the point home: that...
Take our needs assessment survey The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Mission Action Lab, together with the Danish Design Centre, is launching an international survey on implementing missions. The survey deadline is 13.12.21 and can be accessed here. The survey is open to all interested in missions or mission-oriented innovation approach: those who have launched or are involved in a mission, those who are still thinking about it or want to know more....
“What is innovation, anyway?” It is a question we are asked at the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) every day. The concept of innovation is varied and confusing. Intentionally managing and steering innovation in governments even more so. While the OECD’s public sector innovation definition outlines that innovation is something that is novel to the context, implemented and brings about impact (for example in the form…
class=”has-opsi-normal-font-size” id=”how-do-you-manage-a-variety-of-innovation-projects-with-differing-types-of-innovation-different-goals-and-perhaps-different-teams-and-funders-to-avoid-dealing-with-a-mere-list-of-projects-practitioners-have-recently-become-interested-in-innovation-portfolio-approaches”>How do you manage a variety of innovation projects, with differing types of innovation, different goals, and perhaps different teams and funders? To avoid dealing with…
Much of what the public sector seeks to do through innovation aims at making life simpler for citizens: adapting to evolving needs while also improving agility in the design and delivery of programs and services. Over the course of the past year in particular, governments have been relying heavily on adaptive innovation and agile approaches to respond to the rapidly changing needs of society. On 8 June 2021, OPSI, with the support of the EU...
On May 11th 2021, OPSI hosted a workshop in partnership with the Austrian Federal Ministry for Civil Service and Sport on Enhancement-Oriented Innovation, as part of our ongoing work on the Innovation facets through our Horizon 2020 programme of research. Over 100 people representing 36 nationalities joined us to hear about  the relationships between innovation and public sector efficiency and productivity, as well as methods and tools…
Innovation portfolio management is becoming a core practice for intentional and proactive public sector innovation units to prepare governments to address a diversity of current and future challenges.  The practice: Helps build clarity of purpose of innovation; Provides a high-level view of the interrelationships between innovation support activities; Identifies gaps and prompts for ideas for changes in direction or composition; and Identifies the types of innovation supports needed to…
Editor’s note: This is a guest blog written by Emily Wise, Lund University action researcher for Future by Lund, Sweden. Lund municipality’s innovation platform, Future by Lund works to catalyse development activities for sustainable cities – addressing complex challenges through collective action. Leveraging insights from OPSI’s innovation facets model (among others), the Future by Lund team is currently experimenting with new ways to steward and advance a portfolio of collaborative…