Vinnova - the Swedish government’s innovation agency
Written by Dan Hill, Director of Strategic Design
Featuring contributions from Brian Eno, Pernilla Glaser, Afton Halloran, Mariana Mazzucato, Darja Isaksson, Anja Melander, Marco Steinberg, Jakob Trollbäck and Amanda Wood.
SUMMARY ✎
What this book is
This book describes how Vinnova devised and tested an approach to mission-oriented innovation, from 2019 to 2022. It describes the background to the work, in terms of innovation policy, strategic design, and the local context in Sweden, and it outlines the design process developed by Vinnova in detail. It is a form of playbook, comprising short technical guides to practice as well as critical reflection on the nature of the work. It provides an account of the work done, as well as reflections on what the work was about, in terms of theory and practice. This is in the spirit of sharing legible practice—enabling discussion and critique, learning and adaptation.
What this book is not
This book does not attempt to be the definitive guide to mission-oriented innovation in practice, as some ideal process. Instead, it is only a story of how Vinnova developed pilot missions and mission practices for Sweden. Although broader perspectives are discussed, and the techniques may be useful outside Sweden, this playbook’s emphasis on context rejects the idea that such processes can simply be copypasted elsewhere. Equally, the story pauses at the prototyping stage, and so it deliberately stops short of initiating Demonstrators, though it does describe this next development of the Prototypes.
Book presentation
The book was launched on March 11th 2022 - you can watch the presentation here (in ENGLISH)