Mission-Oriented Innovation to bring more women online! Interview with Noémie Bürkl and Benjamin Kumpf

An interview with Noémie Bürkl (Head of Division Digitalisation, BMZ) and Benjamin Kumpf (Head, OECD INDEF) to kick off the programme.

Noémie Bürkl: Admittedly, “mission-oriented innovation” – in short MOI – is a rather unknown concept, to begin with. The idea behind it is a policy that defines concrete and measurable goals, without prescribing solutions. This sounds contradictory at first, but can be an effective approach to tackling complex social challenges such as climate protection – problems that cannot be solved with a vertical approach in a single area.

Overcoming the gender digital divide is also a good example of this: it is not sufficient to get more women interested in the IT sector or to teach a few thousand girls how to program. Instead, it’s a challenge that needs to be tackled from many different angles – education, regulation, access, cultural barriers, for example – and for which there is no single, simple solution. This is where MOI comes in – turning the tables and defining a clear goal. Let me give a fictitious example: We want to double the number of women with access to the Internet in ten years. It is then up to politicians to design together cross-departmental and cross-sectoral packages of political and regulatory measures to achieve this goal.

While the MOI approach has already proven itself in industrialised countries, the level of knowledge on the benefits of it in middle- and low-income countries (LMICs) is limited. In cooperation with the partner governments in Colombia and the Dominican Republic, BMZ and OECD want to increase the level of knowledge in LMICs and accelerate the promotion of gender equality in the digital age. The OECD is a valued partner organisation in this context, as it has special expertise on MOI and promotes international knowledge exchange on the topic. The findings of the pilot program, especially on the use of the method in promoting gender equality, can also be beneficial for future development policy initiatives.

Benjamin Kumpf: The normative orientation of innovation strategies is not new. What has been new in the last ten years, however, is the development of new technological and process innovations as well as new forms of cooperation. Today, there are cross-sectoral innovation portfolios and a variety of funding mechanisms, some of which are still in the testing phase. The U.S. government’s “Energy Earthshot” mission and the Korean government’s “Alchemist” program are examples of missions that rely on new technologies and are implemented through financial and technical support. The latter follows a “stage-gating” approach: each phase of the innovation process is funded, and further support is provided only after pre-defined indicators have been achieved.

Therefore, I founded the “OECD Mission Action Lab” with colleagues, to research missions in different countries and to promote the exchange of knowledge between OECD member states and less developed countries. It is important to emphasise that both sides always learn from each other.

Benjamin Kumpf: In recent years, we have been looking at various forms of mission-oriented innovation policy: On the one hand, missions initiated by governments, such as India’s goal of supplying all households with drinking water by 2024; on the other hand, transnational missions jointly formulated by governments and development agencies, such as the “Family Planning 2030” mission, which aims to provide women with access to contraceptives. We also examined the strategies of specialised organisations, such as the UK’s innovation agency Nesta and Sweden’s Vinnova, to support such missions. An important finding of our research is that in LMICs, the national and local ministries of research and innovation are often hardly involved in missions. This is contrary to practices in the EU and points to a neglect of these actors.

Noémie Bürkl: You can look at the gender digital divide from two perspectives. On the one hand, there is the issue of justice: despite increasing global connectivity, women in particular are excluded from the opportunities of the digital transformation in our partner countries – of participation, jobs, knowledge and information. The reasons for this include a lack of access to mobile devices, a lack of digital skills or gender-specific online violence. The gender digital divide is particularly large in LMICs, and in parts even growing.

Benjamin Kumpf: We use an ‘action research’ approach, in which a concrete benefit is generated for our partners. We are currently talking to colleagues from planning and information and communication technology (ICT) ministries as well as regulatory authorities to formulate common goals and carry out ‘mission diagnostics’. In doing so, we analyse existing collaboration and financing mechanisms as well as the political anchoring of the mission in society. We use tools such as surveys, interviews, and workshops to generate knowledge. To further develop policy approaches, we will then present the diagnosis and an options menu, involving partners from OECD countries with experience with MOI approaches. This involves dialogue based on partnership, from which all sides benefit, as well as the establishment of new partnerships. It’s not about one-sided learning from north to south.

Benjamin Kumpf: For the actors from politics, business and society in the respective partner countries, we will work with our partners to develop a country-specific diagnosis, which will then be discussed in a final seminar. For actors in development cooperation as a whole, we will derive a working paper and also shorter articles. Beyond the papers, it is important to us to provide useful insights in the long term. For this reason, we seek exchanges with organisations that are interested in the approach and are happy to present our results for discussion.