Mission-oriented innovation policy and the challenge of urgency: Lessons from Covid-19 and beyond

While the collective “mission” to manage Covid-19, preferably through a vaccine, struggles from the time constraints that abound, researchers of “mission-oriented innovation” must conceptualize urgency better in order to keep their explanations on par with current and future policy dynamics. But how to understand “urgency” beyond observing time constraints? How does urgency transform the conditions of policy-making? What qualitatively distinguishes mission-oriented innovation under urgency? The paper spells out a concise definition of urgency in decision-making that is applicable to policy-making. Urgency transforms policy-making in that time obliterates paths of action which affects the rationality of the outcome. Path-dependencies may certainly ensue. What might affect public policy generally, is particularly challenging for mission-oriented innovation policy which must potentially manage the tension between the elevated “wickedness” and the increased urgency of societal challenges while innovation is, in addition, a specifically uncertain process.