In this project, TIPC researchers collaborate with Sweden’s Innovation Agency – Vinnova.
The policy experiment’s aim is to enable managers, policymakers and others to become more effective in realising and evaluating missions, with a reflexive and transformative lens. The team is working towards transformative change within key contemporary systems – engaging with everyday food and mobility systems particularly within the context of health and sustainability.
According to Vinnova, addressing key societal and environmental challenges requires technological innovation accompanied by organisational, institutional and cultural change. Applying a mission-oriented approach, Vinnova wants to assess initiatives on the ability to deliver transformative goals. For this learning, the project moves beyond direct project outputs.
Often, change is a process which takes place beyond the location and timeframe of policy interventions. By postponing policy assessment to when impacts begin to show, the opportunity for recording valuable learning insights is lost. Therefore, it is crucial to define more immediate measurable transformative outcomes. This is what the project aims to achieve.
Approach
This project explores the rationale, practice and feasibility of the TIPC Methodology for Vinnova. It looks at defining the specific activities needed for the approach and uncovers the practical and theoretical implications. The TIPC Methodology centres around Formative Evaluation (FE) to achieve Transformative Outcomes (TO). There is set of principles and practices that aim to improve policy design and implementation in close collaboration with all actors in the project.
The project proposal revolves around developing and testing the TIPC methodology tailored to Vinnova to extract implementation lessons to build knowledge, capability and capacity within the agency.
The experiment looks at TOs that are traceable and attributable to the policy interventions to show indications of whether, and how, the mission is triggering transformative processes for system change in food, health and mobility. The evaluation involves steps for learning and reflection that then guides policy development and implementation towards transformative goals, embedded in the SDGs that Sweden is focusing on.
With a reflexive layer that is integrated, participatory, and based on co-creational principles, Second Order Learning (SOL) is induced. This type of learning is focused on questioning assumptions. To enable SOL the project should be responsive and flexible to new developments.
The reflection and learning process composes of five main phases spread over the cause of 28 months. Subsequently, the project might continue for another year, contingent on a project review.
