This cookbook of strategies for change is about the role that a strong public innovation system plays along the pathways towards sustainable food systems. We demonstrate this through a mission approach for deliberate food system transformation that can support people, planet and society. This strategy cookbook will provide the ingredients – templates for developing interventions, guides for how to get started and examples of cross-cutting projects – that you can use to create your own recipes for change. We offer a new, emergent way to work with complex and dynamic systems. The cookbook is intended primarily for national and regional innovation agencies, as the government has both a mandate and more authority than any other entity to lead the change needed to achieve sustainable food systems. However, because innovation ecosystems include a variety of different actors, this strategy cookbook also provides valuable insights into the roles that entrepreneurs and civil society and research organisations can play to cultivate change from the bottom-up.