Reinforcing synergies between experimentation spaces and innovation procurement

This topic aims to shorten the time to market for innovations by reinforcing synergies between innovation procurement and experimentation spaces such as test beds, livings labs or regulatory sandboxes. While public buyers often do not use experimentation spaces to test before they invest, companies also too often only start looking for potential customers, verifying regulatory compliance and product certification after R&D is finished, which delays commercialisation. This action enables innovators to develop and test innovative solutions immediately in cooperation with public buyers and where relevant also with competent regulatory and certification bodies.

This specific challenge tackles both the gap between supply and demand for innovative solutions and the lack of cooperation of buyers with test beds, living labs, regulatory authorities and certification bodies during R&D. It targets therefore consortia of public buyers with similar procurement needs to drive innovation from the demand side, by together challenging the market to develop innovative solutions and by cooperating with test beds, living labs and where applicable with regulatory and certification bodies to remove regulatory and/or certification barriers for innovative solutions to enter the market in Europe. Cooperating with regulatory authorities has the specific benefit that then the testing environment of the PCP procurement can serve also as a regulatory sandbox. By fostering innovation procurement and opening a route to the market for innovative companies, including in particular also startups and scaleups, this topic contributes to the objectives of the EU Startup Scaleup Strategy and the European Innovation Act.

PCP actions target consortia of procurers with similar needs that want to procure together and with relevant competent regulatory and certification bodies that want to cooperate with the procurers during the PCP project. Therefore, this topic does not provide direct funding to developers, industry or research organisations to perform R&D. They will be able to respond to the call for tenders launched by consortia of procurers funded under this call, and the winning tenderers will receive procurement contracts from the procurers. Specific guidance on PCP actions and minimum eligibility requirements can be found in General Annexes H of the Horizon Europe work programme.

Joint pre-commercial procurement enables public buyers to share the effort and costs of procuring R&D and create a critical mass of demand that can trigger suppliers to commercialise promising research that can address concrete public sector needs. The aim of engaging in such more forward-looking R&D procurement strategies is to modernise the provision of public services faster, whilst creating also opportunities for industry and researchers in Europe to take international leadership in new markets. Establishing a cooperation between public buyers and suppliers during the development and testing of the solutions enables to tune developed solutions to concrete customer needs. When public buyers don’t have themselves advanced testing environments to test innovative technologies, cooperating with experimentation spaces such as living labs or test beds can help public buyers overcome this issue. Cooperating where relevant also with regulatory and/or certification bodies enables these bodies to learn already during the PCP about the potential impact of emerging innovations and adapt where needed the regulatory/certification process to accommodate smooth arrival of those innovations on the market. Testing the compliance of innovation solutions by a transnational buyers’ group in cooperation with regulatory/certification entities of different countries can also facilitate early identification of potential implications of ensuring the compliance of emerging innovations with regulations in a cross-border context.

This topic complements calls for PCP Actions foreseen in other Horizon Europe 2025 work programmes, by tackling challenges that are not addressed by or that cut across the scope of PCP action topics in other work programmes[[For an overview of PCP actions in other work programmes see: https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/strategy/support-policy-making/shaping-eu-research-and-innovation-policy/new-european-innovation-agenda/innovation-procurement/horizon-europe-funding-pcp-and-ppi_en

]]. It is open to proposals for PCP actions in all areas of public sector interest requiring innovative solutions linked to the EU strategic priorities. It is open both to proposals that require improvements mainly based on one specific technology field, as well as to those that require end-to-end solutions that need combinations of different technologies.

The aim is to leverage PCP to encourage the development and to provide a first customer reference for the piloting, installation and validation of breakthrough innovations. Involvement of procurement decision makers is thus needed to ensure that end solution(s) are adopted by procurers, increasing the societal impact of the R&D activities. Therefore, procurers should declare in the proposal their interest to pursue deployment of solutions resulting from the PCP in case the PCP delivers successful solutions and indicate whether they will (1) procure successful solution(s) as part of the project during or after the PCP procurement, (2) launch after the project a separate follow-up procurement after the PCP to buy such type of solutions, (3) adopt successful solutions without the need to procure them (e.g. in case of open source solutions), (4) foresee financial or regulatory incentives for others to adopt successful solutions (e.g. in case the final end-users of the solutions are not the procurers but for example citizens).

In these four cases, the procurers can implement the project as a fast-track PCP (see general annex H). In the first case, the procurers must foresee the budget in the proposal to purchase at least one solution during the project (either as part of the PCP procurement budget or as part of the budget for subcontracting, purchase of equipment or other costs). In the second case, the procurers should include in the proposal a deliverable that prepares the follow-up procurement to purchase such type of solution(s) after the PCP procurement. In the first and third case, the procurers must foresee sufficient time during the project to deploy and validate that the solutions function well after installation. In the fourth case, the procurers can use financial support to third parties to provide financial incentives to final end-users to adopt the solutions, with a maximum budget of EUR 200 000.

The project funded under this topic should demonstrate a greater degree of ambition in terms of innovation level and/or deployment scope. The selection of the third parties to be supported under the grant will be based on an external review by independent experts of the proposed work, under full responsibility of the beneficiary consortia.