New delierable reviews the contribution of social innovations to the EU Missions.
The EU Missions are a relatively new instrument of European research and innovation policy. Since their implementation in the current Horizon Europe research framework programme in 2021, the EU Missions have aimed to solve complex challenges through targeted research and innovation activities. The five mission areas bundle activities to improve cancer prevention, early detection, treatment and quality of life of survivors, foster climate change adaptation, help cities to become climate-neutral and smart, contribute to clean oceans and water and healthy soils. So far, the role of social innovations in EU Missions has neither been supported nor analysed in a strategical manner. The EU project Social Innovation Mission Facility aims to close this gap and unlock social innovations’ full potential for the EU Missions.
The project’s recent deliverable “Social Innovation in Support of the EU Missions” coordinated by Prof. Jürgen Howaldt and Marthe Zirngiebl highlights the potential of social innovation for the EU Missions. It presents conceptual considerations as well as empirical findings. To this end, the authors of the report reviewed key literature on social innovation, mission-oriented innovation policy and the current status of the five EU Missions. Building on this literature review, the project defines social innovation as “new practices, social relations, forms of organisation or institutional arrangements that address societal challenges in new ways”.
Following this definition, the authors reviewed the role of social innovation in EU projects funded under topics explicitly referring to one or more EU Mission. Employing a keyword search to more than 200 projects listed in CORDIS in September 2025, allowed them to identify projects signalling social innovation activities. The review shows: Only a few projects explicitly refer to social innovation in the description of their objectives or activities. If projects mention the term, they often use it to describe the diverse types of innovation that a project aims to promote. While only few projects refer to social innovation explicitly, the review revealed a range of projects whose activities signal social innovation as defined by the authors. For example, projects in the mission area of climate change adaptation establish new forms of organisation through participatory processes and thereby provide space for new social relationships, projects in Mission Soil experiment with new practices in land use and education; and in the Mission Cancer collaborative research experiments with new forms of organisation and identifies promising new practices. The deliverable presents 11 projects in more detail that explicitly mention and/or implicitly pursue social innovation in their activities.
In parallel with identifying social innovations in EU Mission projects, the authors reviewed the potential of existing social innovation initiatives to contribute to achieving the goals of the EU Missions. To this end, initiatives collected in five social innovation databases were reviewed against the background of the goals of the EU Missions. The analysis shows: While few social innovations contribute directly to the objectives of the EU Missions, social innovations listed in the databases tend to target underlying root causes and thereby contribute to several of the EU Missions. The report presents examples from the databases for all EU Missions.
Building on these conceptual considerations and empirical findings, the Social Innovation Mission Facility project will outline impact pathways for social innovations contributing to the EU Missions, in the upcoming months.