Public Procurement of Innovation
Public procurement of innovation (or public contracts for innovation) occurs when contracting authorities seek to procure the development or implementation of cutting-edge innovative solutions to meet the medium- to long-term needs of the public sector; it serves as a tool designed to deliver public services of the highest possible quality and efficiency.
In certain cases, it is possible to address challenges in the public sector through innovative solutions that are almost, or already, available on the market in small quantities and do not require further research and development (R&D). It is in such cases that Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (referred to by the European Commission as PPI) can be used to put these solutions into practice. In other cases, the challenges facing the public sector require technological improvements that are so demanding that they are still a long way from the market stage and require further R& D; in such situations, it is appropriate to use Pre-commercial Procurement (referred to by the European Commission as PCP) to weigh up the pros and cons of competing alternative approaches and gradually reduce the risks associated with the most promising innovations through solution design, prototyping, development and initial product testing. The Innovation Partnership procedure combines the R&D phase and the procurement of innovative solutions into a single procedure.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
By developing a forward-looking public procurement strategy for innovation that uses PCP and PPI in a complementary manner (or the ‘partnership for innovation’), public procurers can drive demand-side innovation, thereby enabling the public sector to modernise public services more rapidly whilst creating opportunities for European companies to secure their first customer reference and achieve international leadership in new markets.