Everyone on board? Dynamic capabilities and their role for transformative change in Germany

This study explores the role of dynamic capabilities for transformative policy-making, focusing on industrial and mission-oriented policies in Germany. While being a front-runner on the one hand, Germany faces multiple deeply rooted structural barriers for transformative change. By comparing various cases of attempts of transformative policy change (High-Tech Strategy 2025 and Climate Contracts) and administrative reforms (agency for disruptive innovation SPRIND and the coordination of foresight activities) among principal state actors, the paper provides an in-depth view on the interaction between dynamic capabilities and reform efforts. The analysis highlights that dynamic capabilities are pivotal for facilitating change, underlining particularly the necessity of shaping routines that depend upon sense-making and connecting routines. However, given the path-dependent and segmented administrative system in Germany, dynamic capabilities required activation by a disruptive impulse that challenged existing structures and processes. We conclude that change processes should explicitly take into consideration the role of such disruptive impulses.