Learning, sharing and co-design in innovation procurement between innovation suppliers and buyers

Project Information

InnoBuyer

Grant agreement ID: 101071212

DOI

10.3030/101071212

Project closed

EC signature date 25 July 2022

Start date 1 September 2022

End date 30 November 2025

Funded under

• The European Innovation Council (EIC)

Total cost

€ 2 000 000,00

EU contribution

€ 2 000 000,00

Coordinated by

F6S NETWORK IRELAND LIMITED
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - InnoBuyer (Learning, sharing and co-design in innovation procurement between innovation suppliers and buyers)

Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2023-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The acquisition of innovation by public and private organisations enables better and more efficient service delivery to citizens and customers. These organisations can acquire innovation via direct procurement from the market when a mature solution is available. However, frequently public and private buyers have unmet needs that require innovative solutions that are not yet in the market.

InnoBuyer is a Coordination and Support Action, funded by the European Union, that aims to become a testing ground and benchmark towards the implementation of a demand-driven methodology that brings together Challengers (public and private organisations) and Solvers (SMEs), to jointly co-create innovative solutions, and speed-up the procurement of innovation.

Project goals:
1) Foster the development of an ecosystem to promote collaborative innovation between Challenge owners and Solvers.
2) Launch and validate a support programme to co-create innovation between Challengers and Solvers. The programme is demand-driven and geared to adoption by design.
3) Demonstrate the increase of efficiency of EU public (but also private) services via piloting 15 innovative solutions.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The InnoBuyer project achieved significant progress in its first year. Key accomplishments include:

1) Call for Challengers: This initiative successfully attracted 55 proposals (representing unmet innovation needs), from 39 buyers across 17 countries and multiple sectors. After thorough evaluation, 15 organisations were elected as challengers, comprising both public and private entities.

2) InnoBuyer Action #1 - Identification of Challenges: This marked the initiation of the InnoBuyer four-steps demand-driven methodology. This stage involved assisting the 15 selected challengers in transforming their "unmet innovation needs" into clear and engaging challenge descriptions, vital for attracting potential solution providers. And also the identification of 47 observing challengers - organisations that potentially have the same unmet innovation needs as the 15 selected challengers and which are interested in following the development of the corresponding solutions. As a result, 15 refined challenge descriptions were published on the InnoBuyer website.

3) Creation of the InnoBuyer Ambassador Network: Establishment of a network of 33 ambassadors (innovation procurement experts) from 13 countries, with the objective of dissemination the InnoBuyer project opportunities more widely.

4) Organised events: Hosting 3 public events, gathering the procurers community and innovation procurement experts, to promote the InnoBuyer project and share knowledge such as the "10 keys for unmet needs identification" guidelines.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

InnoBuyer aims to test an innovative and sequential methodology to speed up the adoption of innovative solutions by public and private organisations.
This methodology, structured in four carefully crafted steps listed below, ensures a streamlined and efficient approach to foster innovation in procurement processes.
1) Challenge description: support challengers to describe their challenge in a clear and engaging manner
2) Open Market Consultation: connect challengers with innovation suppliers (solvers) via open market consultation events, and select solvers to co-create pilots
3) Pilot co-creation: challengers and solvers co-create and deploy pilots to address the challenges
4) Terms of Reference delivery: support the challengers in the creation of ToRs in collaboration with external legal experts, as the base for a future tender to acquire a solution.

The successful conclusion of the first phase serves as a testament to the methodology's practicality and relevance, judging by the feedback received from challengers.

Further impact assessment will be conducted until the end of the project to measure the efficiency of the methodology.

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