This article contributes to the burgeoning literature on directionality challenges by introducing directionality heuristics as a lens to conceptualize how policymakers and other stakeholders interpret and respond to problems in challenge-led innovation policy. Our starting point is that the “wickedness” of problems is strongly shaped by subjective and context-specific perceptions. We therefore utilize and adapt a sense-making framework, originally developed in the management literature, to distinguish different ways in which actors engage with the complexity and uncertainty of such problems. Building on this perspective, we conceptualize directionality heuristics as domain-specific rules of thumb that guide how policymakers interpret and address problems. We demonstrate the usefulness of this concept by applying it retrospectively to the Dutch Mission-oriented Topsector and Innovation Policy. The illustration highlights how stakeholders' differing views on the wickedness of problems translate into particular directionality challenges as well as suitable practices to address those. We conclude by outlining three key propositions, which emphasize the main conceptual contributions and provide concrete paths for future research and policy. • Sense-making helps to understand how policymakers view and tackle wicked problems. • Directionality heuristics are mental shortcuts used to interpret and address problems. • Different degrees of wickedness call for different directionality heuristics. • Nescience creates additional directionality challenges for challenge-led policies.
Mueller et al. (2026) studied this question.