Creating innovation instruments and mechanisms for a national industry is complex, with sustainability ambitions adding to the complexity. Adding temporal pressure on top of this complexity, the climate and resource emergency demands a swift re-orientation of business innovation processes and, in tandem, supporting instruments and mechanisms. This qualitative empirical study explores the process of creating a national proposal for a circular innovation programme for industry: how the urgency of sustainability challenges drives adaptation of innovation processes, and how implementing agile processes allows for adequate reaction to changes and aids project management.