Catalyzing Incubation: How does Addressing Mission-Oriented Grand Challenges Enable Industry Inception?

We examine how mission-oriented grand challenges, formed to address the public sector’s unmet needs through development of new technologies and products for high potential impact, originate and catalyze the incubation of new industries. Our analysis of six industry case studies identifies four temporal phases of the process: identification of unmet needs as a grand challenge, championing and articulation of a mission, industry incubation through public-private partnerships, and success or failure of the mission for subsequent industry emergence. The insights from the analysis informs our conceptual model of how the public sector leverages private enterprise for successful industry incubation. The model shows similarities and differences of this incubation process relative to industries triggered by scientific discoveries or unmet needs, where the role of the public sector is not as salient. Moreover, it identifies attributes of public sector functions associated with successful outcomes that include goal setting as a lead user, and strategies for leveraging private enterprise related to selection, coordination, and knowledge sharing.