News & Views

Earlier this year, Scottish Enterprise adopted missions to signal its new strategic approach to deliver more transformative outcomes, inspired by the work of Mariana Mazzucato and colleagues at UCL. 

So what are missions and what can they bring to economic development? 

Many now realise that conventional policies and tools are often insufficient and ineffective in addressing complex grand challenges such as climate change, inequalities and health pandemics. Missions are a different way of marshalling new solutions.  They frame the issues differently, focusing on systemic change rather than narrow policies targeting specific sectors or markets.  Missions are driven by wide collaboration and a determined focus by the public sector to operate differently.  They allow public organisations to unlock business ingenuity and investment to create jobs and growth that serve the interests of people and the planet.   

Mission-oriented thinking challenges conventional economic development thinking in a variety of ways.  It also calls on public sector organisations to reinvent their role and develop new capabilities.  For example, 

• Tackling complex, grand challenges demands new solutions and partnerships, often working with ‘unusual suspects’ and collaborating to gain scale 

• Missions are about creating and shaping market opportunities, intentionally directing public investment to steer/unlock private sector resources – quite different to the traditional idea of addressing market failures  

• The state is an equal partner alongside the private sector, in contrast to the laissez-faire notion of responding to market demands.  In this model, the public sector uses conditionalities that direct investment and innovation (e.g. net zero, fair work), creating public/societal value as well as sharing risks/rewards with the private sector 

• Missions align with economic, social and environmental goals to enable economies to become more inclusive, sustainable and resilient in the face of crises 

• Rather than picking winners missions are about working with the willing, shifting support towards those businesses, investors and partners who are aligned with mission goals  

• Narrow cost/benefit analysis is replaced by dynamic evaluation methods that reflect the spillovers involved in systems change. 

Scottish Enterprise is still at an early stage in its journey but is learning from other organisations, including the Mission Oriented Innovation Network, to shape the design and delivery of its missions.  It’s selected three missions to focus delivery and drive wider collaboration to create scale: 

• Creating an internationally competitive energy transition economy in Scotland 

• Scaling the impact of Scotland’s innovation strengths into high-growth industries of the future 

• Driving capital investment to deliver a step-change in Scotland’s productivity. 

All three missions directly address the key challenges and opportunities faced by Scotland’s economy, issues which are at the heart of the Scottish Government’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation. 

In transitioning to a new approach Scottish Enterprise is also changing how it operates: 

• Designing new programmes to unlock investment and opportunities – including support for port/harbour development, increased investment in manufacturing premises and the development of university/business innovation districts 

• Integrating responsible and sustainable practices and conditional funding (net zero, fair work and equalities, diversity and inclusion) into business and project support to create a fairer, greener and growing economy 

• Changing its approach to business engagement so it supports fewer, more impactful businesses who are directly aligned with mission objectives 

• Evolving how it tracks performance improvement to identify new measures and real-time evaluation methods. 

All in all, this is a bold step. It’s probably the biggest change that Scottish Enterprise has taken for many years – but one that has been warmly received by businesses and politicians alike.  

While the level of ambition is high, Scottish Enterprise is clear that economic transformation will take time.   

Most exciting is the ability to think differently about tackling the complex challenges and opportunities faced by Scotland’s economy.  By collaborating, we can find new solutions to harness the innovation and investment needed to drive transformative change. We’d love to hear your views on our mission-based approach, and how we could work with each other to boost economic development in Scotland.  

By Ewan Mearns, Scottish Enterprise