Hopes are a special kind of Hype where high expectations towards some form of innovation are not built in the innovative process, as usual, but where an emerging innovation meets a rather full-grown set of expectations. A cure for cancer or reliable nuclear fusion are cases in point. Hopes regularly accompany grand societal challenges, where pressing problems imply collectively accepting a solution without a concrete innovation in sight. Whoever could suggest a promising path towards such a solution, then, expects extraordinary appreciation. This means easy opportunities, but it also suggests a matrix of difficulties if the hope is disappointed. Discrepancies obscured during the building of the hope may surface more visibly as the “promise-requirement cycle” picks up. As they are ubiquitous in, and determine the discursive and legitimising dynamics of, grand societal challenges, a robust research program on hopes is necessary. Drawing on a diversity of approaches, the presentation aims at stimulating a discussion and fixing some first conceptual and methodical guideposts for the assessment of the dynamics of hopes in societal transformation and beyond.