An overview of innovative procurement

Recent documents on public procurement by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union confirm the growing consensus on the role of public procurement in addressing social challenges, improving productivity, creating job opportunities and ensuring value for money. Public procurers are becoming more concerned not only with “how to buy” – promoting aggregation in public procurement– but also with “what to buy.” This article focuses on innovation procurement in the European Union and on the role of public procurers in providing new solutions through a demand-side approach using pre-commercial procurement (PCP) and public procurement of innovative solutions (PPI). The article concerns also the challenges of Public Procurement of Innovation as well as the different National policies and institutional frameworks to foster innovation: preliminary market consultations, innovation partnership, technical and functional specifications, award criteria.