ExpectedOutcome:
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
- Establishing long-term national and regional innovation procurement policy frameworks and integration of innovation procurement in sectoral policies;
- Establishing action plans, including spending targets and monitoring systems to be implemented by different levels of public authorities; defined set of incentives mechanisms to stimulate innovation procurement;
- Adoption and scale-up of joint procurement initiatives managed by national, regional, local authorities enabling innovations to be commercialised in the public (and also private) sector (and therefore providing market opportunities to European innovators and encouraging cross-European procurement);
- Further engagement of public buyer’s community with SMEs, start-ups, incubators and accelerators, research institutions in driving innovation demand and detecting the innovative solutions;
- Improved SMEs’ skills and capacity to identify buyers’ needs, to facilitate access to the public buyers;
- Improved buyers’ skills and capacity to match their needs and challenges to possible technological solutions at the market and design innovative procurements;
- Effective adoption of co-creation models to stimulate SMEs’ response to buyer’s needs and challenges;
- Reduced gap between pilots, up-take and scale-up of projects.
Scope:
Target group(s): Public national, regional and/or local authorities, public-owned enterprises, SMEs and start-ups, incubators, accelerators, research institutions and technological organisations.
The aim of this topic is to boost the innovation procurement in Europe by engaging public and private buyers in the purchase of innovative solutions.
Public purchasers are important actors for the innovation ecosystem, however, the potential of procuring innovative solutions is severely underexploited and untapped. With their 14% of GDP purchasing power are not only potential launching customers of innovative solutions, they can also drive innovation by asking the market to develop new ones (market research and engagement) and by co-financing the innovation process (pre-commercial procurement, procurement of Research and Development services, Competitive Dialogue, Innovation Partnership, etc.). There are a number of obstacles, which prevent public buyers from buying innovative solutions: insufficient administrative capacity, lack of awareness, legal challenges in the transposition into Member State legislation, and risk-adverse approach to procurement, important differences among Member States but also among various level of buyers, e.g. local, regional, national and depending on the sector (health, infrastructure, education, municipality services, etc.). Similarly, the reach and benefits of innovation procurement procedures, in terms of results and outputs, are very often limited to the direct beneficiary, rather than spill-over more widely, even in the regional and/or national context.
The applicants are encouraged to consider a project duration of at least five (5) years and the proposals should focus on strategic oriented joint innovation programmes (multi-annual action plans), that will include activities aimed to enable national and/or regional and/or local authorities and/or municipalities, in association with the public and private buyers, to:
- develop long-term innovation procurement policy frameworks and integration of innovation procurement in sectoral policies;
- develop action plans, including spending targets and monitoring system to be implemented by different levels of public authorities; develop a set of incentives mechanisms to stimulate innovation procurement;
- develop and improve data collection and monitoring of results to demonstrate the positive long-term impact for society in adopting the innovative solutions;
- design a strategy and supporting tools for the further exploitation of the results and outputs of innovation procurement procedures by other EU actors;
- support matchmaking, brokering and expertise gathering entities (including specialised buyers, facilitators/brokers, competence centres) at national but also at regional/city or sector level encouraging dialogue and co-design;
- create and establish capacity in Member States and Associated Countries, support the competence building and preparation of innovation procurement (including legal advice, tender preparation, training);
- contribute to the development of innovative solutions/products (development of product benchmarks, setting up of piloting spaces);
- facilitate exchange of best practices on the legal set up, design and implementation of innovative public procurement.
Cross-cutting Priorities:
Innovation Procurement
