Column
"It is time to harness the power of government
procurement to promote innovation"
As Commission President recently stated in a special prospective
edition of Time Magazine for the year 2010, innovation policies in
Europe are evolving towards demand-side actions. Technological
push needs to be complemented with a better understanding of
societal needs and challenges which in turn can create a demand
for new solutions, new services and new products.
The European Lead Market Initiative1 started to implement this
approach using standards, regulation and public procurements
to stimulate market demand for innovation.
In particular, three networks of public procurers have been set-up
to exchange best practice and developing targeted guidelines to
innovative public procurers involved in the intelligent/protective
textile and sustainable construction sectors2; PIANOo is involved
in these networks as are other Dutch stakeholders. European events
are regularly organised to raise visibility, in particular with public
procurers and industry. The latest was dedicated to: "Promoting
Innovation through Public Procurement: Best Practice &
Networking" and took place in March 2010 with more than 200
stakeholders in Brussels.
Some Member States and regions have started to develop new
schemes to encourage innovative procurement. Pioneers include
the Dutch Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) pilot
programme, and the UK Small Business Research Initiative
programme.
At European level, it is important to organise exchanges and mutual
learning between such approaches and indeed a peer review of SBIR
schemes is being conducted by INNO-Partnering Forum4 supported
by the European Commission.
Further actions at European level to foster innovative public procurement are under consideration for the new European research and innovation policy, which is being developed as the 'Innovation Union' flagship initiative as part of the Europe 2020 strategy. For example, actions could aim at linking up public procurers at national, regional and metropolitan level to pool the risks of procuring innovations and overcome fragmentation in public procurement markets across Europe. So we look forward learning more about the Dutch experiences and how its success could be elevated at European level.