In recent years, there has been rapidly growing interest in Innovation Districts (ID) in urban policy and practice. IDs are touted as catalysts for innovation and economic development involving a wide range of stakeholders often in under-performing neighbourhoods or precincts. Despite the appeal, critique is forming around their linear understanding of innovation, the narrow focus of economic goals and lack of directionality in addressing grand societal challenges. This paper proposes the concept of Mission-Oriented Innovation Districts (MOID). MOID are thought to help design, shape and drive transformative change from a place-based perspective. Methodologically, this paper conceptually reviews antecedents of and draws on a structured search and scoping review of the two popular but disjointed literatures on ID and Mission-Oriented Innovation (MOI). Drawing on an analysis of 99 journal articles, this paper seeks to provide a better understanding about differences and common grounds of the two strands of literature. Five analytical categories are developed and applied to assess and interpret insights from existing publications: (1) understandings, definitions, and objectives; (2) theoretical-conceptual underpinnings; (3) analytical and methodological approaches; (4) evaluation; and (5) governance. We find that there is ample opportunity for cross-fertilization of insights across these two literatures. Based on this in-depth analysis, the contours of a new concept of MOID are outlined through a formal definition of MOID and insights from the analysis are translated into future research questions to inform a transformative agenda for innovation policy.

Currently little is known about how institutional arrangements co-evolve with urban experimentation. This paper mobilizes neo-institutional literature and recent urban experimentation literature as a framework to explore how and why institutional arrangements differ across urban contexts. Empirically the paper focusses on smart city initiatives in Amsterdam, Hamburg and Ningbo. These three cities are frontrunners in adopting a comprehensive smart city agenda, but they do so in different ways. The paper examines regulative, normative and cognitive elements of institutional arrangements, explores how they shape experimentation, and reflects on their place-based specificities. The comparative analysis suggests that the focus of, and approach to, experimentation can be understood as resting in a (possibly unique) combination of strategic agency and dynamics at multiple spatial scales.