Mission cocreation or domination? Explorative and exploitative forces in shaping the Dutch circular agriculture mission

Laurens Klerkx, Stephanie Begemann and Matthijs Janssen

Science and Public Policy, 2025, vol. 52, issue 1, 128-145

Abstract: One largely neglected focus in the analysis of mission-oriented innovation policies is mission cocreation between stakeholder groups advocating different solution directions. In this paper, we introduce the innovation management concept of ambidexterity to study how mission cocreation in different mission arenas is influenced by actors aiming to continue existing innovation pathways (exploitative innovation) and actors advocating alternative pathways (explorative innovation). Our case study on the Dutch circular agriculture mission highlights how an initial top-down strategy development was dominated by exploitative forces, despite ambitions to secure broad stakeholder participation. Government-led efforts to still engage exploration-minded actors, and restore ambidexterity, were hampered by potential contributors feeling excluded from the policy process. These findings underline the risk that openness of missions, required for broad stakeholder involvement, might also reinforce pre-existing contestation and innovation pathways. Overall, our findings demonstrate a trade-off between maximizing efficiency and speed versus obtaining novel perspectives and wide societal legitimacy.

Keywords: organizational ambidexterity; food systems transformation; transformative innovation policy; policy mix; mission arenas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/scipol/scae061 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:scippl:v:52:y:2025:i:1:p:128-145.

Access Statistics for this article

Science and Public Policy is currently edited by Nicoletta Corrocher, Jeong-Dong Lee, Mireille Matt and Nicholas Vonortas

More articles in Science and Public Policy from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().