On April 14, 2026, the OECD published its latest report titled Forging New Frontiers in Mission‑Oriented Innovation Policies, which analyses the relationship between modern state involvement and innovation in a changing global environment. This report contains important messages for Hungary as well.
On Mission-Oriented Policies
The relevance of the mission-oriented approach can be explained by several current global processes.
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The urgency of societal challenges: Climate change, biodiversity loss, and the strengthening of healthcare systems following pandemics are tasks that traditional, incremental innovation policy is unable to solve. These challenges require directed, targeted intervention where the state designates the direction (the “why”), but leaves the development of solutions (the “how”) to the cooperation of market and social actors.
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Geopolitical shift and strategic autonomy: In recent years, governments’ attention has turned toward economic competitiveness, defense capabilities, and technological sovereignty. Missions provide an excellent framework for mobilizing a country’s innovation capacities along national priorities (e.g., clean energy, chip manufacturing, or critical raw materials). The report highlights that 70% of missions already contain explicit economic and competitiveness goals.
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Failure of isolated and narrow policy approaches: Traditional “silo-based” governance, where each ministry focuses only on its own area, has proven ineffective in managing complex problems. Missions force various departments to cooperate, helping to use resources more efficiently and avoiding parallel developments.
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Bridging the “Valley of Death”: It often happens to many good research results that they never actually reach practical application. Mission-oriented innovation policies cover the entire innovation cycle from basic research to market entry, thus more effectively supporting the scaling of technologies and systemic change.
Nothing is More Practical Than a Good Theory
The central message of the report is that mission-oriented innovation policies have reached a crossroads: after the initial experimentation phase, implementation, scaling, and demonstrating concrete results have now become the priority. This also follows from the Draghi report, which emphasized that demonstrating competitiveness and innovation results is highly urgent for the European Union so that it does not drift further while weakening, but instead recovers alongside – or even above – its competitors as a conscious builder.
The OECD establishes that missions are no longer merely theoretical models, but systemic tools with which governments are able to coordinate scientific, technological, and regulatory efforts. The report identifies three fundamental pillars that can be the key to successful missions:
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Systemic Framing: If climate change and the problem of an aging and otherwise declining population result in a system of complex, cascading challenges, it simultaneously requires acknowledging and admitting that missions cannot be narrowed down solely to technological developments. A well-framed mission creates a balance between ambitious goals and realities, social needs, and market opportunities.
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Beyond silo-thinking: The management of missions cannot remain exclusively within the jurisdiction of ministries responsible for innovation or science. There is a need to involve specialized ministries (energy, health, transport) and local authorities so that policy instruments (subsidies, regulation, public procurement) do not operate in isolation from one another.
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Private Sector Involvement (Crowding-in): The report emphasizes that state resources alone are not sufficient. Incentives must be developed that attract private capital and corporate innovation, ensuring that developments reach market utilization and social dissemination.
The report thus warns that if mission-oriented innovation policies are unable to transcend the level of research and development (R&D) grants and do not become a real force for economic and social transformation, they may lose their political support.
Message for Hungary
As an OECD member, the document’s findings are extremely important for the Hungarian innovation ecosystem.
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EU Funds and Horizon Europe: For Hungary, the mission-oriented approach is unavoidable for the effective drawdown of EU funds (especially the Horizon Europe program). The European Union itself has defined five major missions (e.g., climate-neutral cities, the fight against cancer). The methodology outlined in the report helps Hungary to better join these initiatives at the national level as well.
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Policy Coordination and Fragmentation: A recurring criticism of the Hungarian innovation system is the cumbersomeness of government coordination and the frequent transformation of the institutional system. The report provides guidance on how R&D could be better linked with industrial policy and social needs (e.g., in the areas of energy transition or digitalization). Elements of the Hungarian National Smart Specialization Strategy (S3) and the RDI strategy already show mission-oriented traits, but deepening these based on the report’s advice could increase efficiency.
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Private Sector Involvement: In Hungary, a significant portion of innovation spending is provided by multinational companies and EU subsidies. The “crowding-in” mechanisms proposed by the report – which encourage domestic SMEs and private capital to join missions – could be key to creating a sustainable and (more) self-propelling domestic innovation ecosystem.
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Competitiveness and Strategic Areas: Since the Hungarian government pays priority attention to areas such as the defense industry, battery manufacturing, or the pharmaceutical industry, the mission-oriented approach could help rethink, fine-tune, and certainly better embed these technological islands into the domestic economy, ensuring that investments result in systemic modernization.
Let us make clear, the requirement to qualitatively improve the stock of intellectual and material capital cannot be forgotten – without which our country may continue to manoeuvre itself into a trap where it is already too expensive to be an assembly plant for foreign capital, but not yet skilled enough to innovate and create competitively.
If the Hungarian economy wishes to transcend the middle-income trap and move toward the development of a socio-economic innovation ecosystem that can successfully withstand the crossfire of challenges, then the findings in the report are definitely worth considering. In other words, innovation is no longer just about science; it is about the ability of a country to co-ordinately mobilize all its strength for a mission-oriented solution – built on long-term commitment – to the most pressing social and economic challenges.
The writing was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
