Innovation has its phases. So does procurement. The challenge is to synchronise them.
No sooner do we land on one report on the role of public spending on innovation, than along comes another. Well, the one from the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) turned up first, but it is a harder, and for us slower, read.
The report is one outcome from a project paid for by Brussels as part of a series of studies on innovation policy. We read in the abstract that "The study analyses existing rules and current practices of public innovation procurement the 15 EU-Member States, Australia, Canada, Norway and the USA and provides 9 examples of good practices for concrete procurement activities."
The introduction to a press release on the topic sums up the ISI's message: "Fraunhofer ISI calls for the state to back more innovative products in public procurement. This encourages innovative enterprises and benefits the citizens, the state's customers."
The ISI has been involved in various EU discussions on procurement, including a meeting late last year. This included presentations on some of the case studies that feature in the ISI's report. Drawn from Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and other countries, these deal with such things as new lighting systems, a maritime radio system, energy saving procurement and "variable message signage for UK motorway network".
The 200+ page report, produced by a high powered team drawn from throughout Europe, tells us that "a major lesson is that the procurement process has to be thought of as a systemic process, in which procurers and decision makers need to think of the implications of what they are doing in a specific phase for the resulting activities, possibilities and constraints in later stages. But there are also feedback loops from later stages to earlier ones. For example, market intelligence might find that certain requirements cannot be met or that users in the organisation are not trained to apply what the market offers. This would mean that before entering the tendering process, requirements and user readiness would have to be checked accordingly."
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