About the work
Cardiff Capital Region commissioned newydd|new, working with Frame, to explore whether a mission-led approach could support its work and what would be needed to make it useful in practice.
Missions organise collaborative activity around a clear, shared goal. The project looked beyond their appeal as an idea to understand how they might fit CCR’s priorities, capacity and ways of working.
The approach
We combined desk research with eight qualitative interviews involving senior leaders and delivery staff from the CCR team.
The conversations explored what people hoped missions could achieve, how priorities and trade-offs were managed, and the organisational conditions needed to support a different approach.
Alongside these perspectives, we reviewed mission frameworks and practice elsewhere, including the approach used by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. We considered which elements could be adapted to CCR’s context rather than adopting a model wholesale.
What the work produced
The project produced a position paper identifying where mission-informed working might offer value and recommending a focused test within CCR’s innovation work.
It proposed a practical next phase: agreeing criteria for selecting opportunities, involving the right people in shaping potential missions, and providing facilitation to support coordination and learning.
The recommendations connected this exploration to CCR’s existing Economic Well-being Objectives. They provided a starting point for testing whether mission-informed approaches could support clearer priorities, stronger decision-making and more focused innovation before committing to a wider organisational model.