Climate change, food security, inequality, health, polarization, changing international orders: the challenges we face are numerous. Policy-makers are not only confronted with complex issues, in a multi-actor, multi-level and multi-issue world but the governance of these problems has itself become a complex issue. To navigate a complex world, science, research, and policy-making move towards novel configurations. To understand and to promote the interaction between science, research, and policy-making, governments, industries, non-governmental organisations and academia need to collaborate and design new modes of governance, regulation and decision-making that stimulate imagination and cooperation.