European Network Of National Competence Centers For Innovation Procurement

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Enhanced capacity of public procurers to carry out PCPs and PPIs;
• Increased amount of PCPs and PPIs taking place at national level and across borders by transnational buyer groups;
• Enhanced awareness among companies, in particular startups and SMEs, of the possibilities offered by innovation procurements to grow their business, by promoting national innovation procurement business opportunities to companies across other EU Member States and Associated Countries;
• Increased amount of EU wide published preliminary market consultations and calls for tenders for PCP and PPI procurements and active promotion of those business opportunities to innovators in EU Member States and Associated Countries;
• Increased recognition of the strategic importance of PCP and PPI by policy makers and in national policies, contributing to increase innovation procurement uptake;
• Expansion and intensification of innovation procurement support measures implemented by innovation procurement competence centers across Europe.

Many public buyers around Europe still lack experience on innovation procurement and need training and guidance. To tackle this challenge, several countries around Europe have set up national competence centers that cooperate with policy makers in their country to implement capacity building measures for innovation procurement. With support of Horizon 2020 funding, in the past, five new competence centers were set up and started collaborating with five existing competence centers across borders^[1].

Europe wide benchmarking identified that there are still significant gaps in national capacity building structures for innovation procurement^[2]. This action therefore aims to support setting up a European wide network of national competence centers for innovation procurement^[3], inspired by the experience and activities of the previous initiative, and extend it further to additional countries and reinforce its activities.

Activities undertaken by the network are expected to include the creation of new national competence centers for innovation procurement^[4] as well as the enlargement and deepening of the scope of activities of existing competence centers. The expected minimum participation is 10 existing national competence centers for innovation procurement plus 5 public bodies that have the mandate to setup 5 new national competence centers for innovation procurement in 5 different Member States or Associated Countries, with at least 2 of the 5 new ones in ‘emerging’ or ‘moderate’ innovator countries^[5]. The network will thus start with participation from at least 15 different EU Member States or Associated Countries and it is expected to aim for participation of national competence centers for innovation procurement from all Member States in the network by the end of the project.

Activities undertaken by the network should also include experience sharing on the implementation of pre-commercial procurement (PCP) and public procurement of innovative solutions (PPI) across Europe, promoting Horizon Europe funding and synergies with ESIF funding for PCP and PPI to public procurers in cooperation with NCPs as well as supporting public procurers in launching such procurements.

Cooperation among public procurers is important because potential market size is a key decision factor for firms to participate or not in a public procurement and to help them grow their business across Europe. Scaling up the impacts of completed innovation procurements by diffusing the uptake of innovative solutions to other public buyers is also vital to mainstream innovation procurement. Activities undertaken by the network are therefore also expected to facilitate the creation of national and transnational buyer groups that ensure wider diffusion of innovations from innovation procurements as well as the creation of transnational buyer groups that start new joint innovation procurements on new topics. In this context, attention should be paid to reinforcing procurements that involve strategic technologies that are key for safeguarding Europe’s economic security. The network is also expected to promote national innovation procurement business opportunities to companies across other EU Member States and Associated Countries. It is encouraged to collaborate closely with the EIC business acceleration services and the Enterprise Europe Network to ensure a wide outreach among European startups and SMEs and raise their awareness on the business opportunities offered by innovation procurement across EU Member States and Associated Countries.

Planned activities are also expected to include collaboration with national policy makers that are responsible for the policies that support the uptake of innovation procurement, in particular R&I and public procurement policies. The competence centers should cooperate with such policy makers to develop and coordinate policy actions to mainstream PCP and PPI across Europe such as implementing action plans, targets, monitoring and incentive schemes that encourage public procurers to undertake more PCPs and PPIs.

The network is expected to maximize synergies with national and ESIF funding and focus the budget requested from Horizon Europe on activities/partners that cannot be funded from ESIF or for which national funding is not available. The network is expected also to cooperate with other Horizon Europe funded initiatives on innovation procurement to maximize impact and synergies where possible.

The expected duration for the action is 4 years.

[1] The procure2innovate project funded a European network for competence centers on innovation procurement between 2017 and 2021: procure2innovate: European network of competence centres for innovation procurement | Procure2Innovate | Project | News & Multimedia | H2020 | CORDIS | European Commission

[2] The 30 countries analysed by the benchmarking have put in place just 27% of capacity building measures to support public buyers to mainstream innovation procurement: https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/strategy/support-policy-making/shaping-eu-research-and-innovation-policy/new-european-innovation-agenda/innovation-procurement/benchmarking-innovation-procurement-investments-and-policy-frameworks-across-europe_en

[3] A competence center on Innovation Procurement is an organization/organizational structure that has been assigned the task by the government of a Member State or Associate Country and has a mandate according to national law to encourage wider use of innovation procurement, that includes among others providing practical and/or financial assistance to public procurers in the preparation and/or implementation of PCP and PPI procurements across all sectors of public interest.

[4] New competence centers can include both entities that want to setup a competence center that does not exist yet and still need to start up during the project their first capacity building activities as well as entities that are already providing a few ad hoc innovation procurement capacity building activities but are not yet a national competence center with a systematic and more comprehensive set of capacity building activities.

[5] For the purposes of assessing which participant represents a ‘moderate’, ‘emerging’, ‘strong’ or ‘innovation leader’ country, the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) is the reference. The applicants must use as a reference the latest version of the documents mentioned above at the time of the call opening. Associated Countries which are not included in the European Innovation Scoreboard and are ranked below 25 on the latest Global Innovation Index are considered as ‘moderate’ or ‘emerging' innovators. In cases of Associated Countries not included in any of the previously mentioned references, the participation rank of the country in the Horizon Europe programme (Horizon Europe country profile) will be taken as a reference and countries ranked below the average will be considered as ‘moderate’ or ‘emerging' innovators