Governments have increasingly turned to innovation policy as a route to address deeply embedded and systemic societal challenges. This is most evident in relation to global climate change but is also visible in stubborn health challenges such as cancer. This turn to transformative innovation is seen by some as a new era of missions echoing the 1960s ‘moonshot’ program. Others suggest that we need a radically different focus on system wide transitions which embrace a mix of social and technological innovations. This seminar introduces these different concepts of innovation and how policy needs to change in order to fulfil transformative aspirations. Illustrations are given from the areas of climate change and cancer.
