The (public) procurement of innovation (POI) provides expertise, guidance, tools and networks connecting the business and public sectors. The EU-funded PROCEDIN project will accelerate POI adoption in two critical areas of innovation – circular economy and green mobility – in the context of European cities’ innovation for sustainability and resilience agendas.

The project will support existing resources and its members’ extensive, pan-European professional networks and initiate new provisions to increase and mobilise POI motivation, knowledge and skills. PROCEDIN will identify key gaps in provision by mapping the complex landscape of growing expertise, experience and learning infrastructure, focusing on promoting enduring access to POI guidance and learning resources for buyers and vendors, and building leadership capacity for innovation.

Public procurement is a powerful tool that accelerates innovation among public sector users and provides innovative companies opportunities for growth. The strategic use of procurement has become significant in the innovation policy agenda in several EU countries and is at the core of the new EU public procurement directive (2014/24/EU). The EU-funded BUILD project will integrate the highest-quality capacity building tools to deploy training and capacity building services to cities.

The project will train public and private procurers, SMEs and start-ups through onsite and online actions on the topics of guiding principles, legal knowledge and procedures, preliminary market consultation, pre-commercial procurement, competitive dialogue, competitive procedure with negotiation, innovation partnership, legal questions and considerations, and risk assessment.

Health InnoFacilitator aims to create a community leveraging capabilities and promoting innovation procurement within healthcare. Provide support, tailor-made training and coaching services for buyers and suppliers, develop and foster a community supported by online collaborative tools.

Increase the awareness, skills and knowledge about innovation procurement among the buyers and the solution providers/ actors of innovation, build capabilities and therefore fostering the innovation procurement capabilities within the community, providing trainings, mentoring and coaching and supporting the community, which will in return, improve SMEs and startups access to innovation procurement, leverage capability among the buyers to develop innovation procurement, foster public and private partnership to encourage the co-design of innovation procurement (matching the buyers’ needs and helping the buyers to identify existing innovative solutions and to identify their needs for research and development).

The adoption of innovative practices by big buyers enables better and more efficient service delivery to citizens and customers. In this context, the EU-funded InnoBuyer project will implement a demand-driven methodology supporting big organisations (Challengers).

The aim is to help them identify their unmet innovation needs and connect with innovative SMEs (Solvers), notably SMEs supported by the European Innovation Council, to jointly co-create innovative solutions. Moreover, InnoBuyer will support the organisations in preparing terms of reference to accelerate the process that will lead to concrete innovation procurement.

The Urban Agenda for the EU is part of the EU’s commitment to both the New Urban Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The actions addressed in the Action Plan 2022 – 2024 correspond with the set of commitments and goals in these European agreements. Innovative and Responsible Public Procurement is one of the EU agenda topics to help and support cities in resolving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) challenges.

In addition to the SDGs, the Partnership aims to achieve a EU Green Deal by using Public Procurement to realise a sustainable future. In light of the crises faced in the period of writing the Action Plan 2022- 2024, the Partnership aims to develop methods to use procurement as a tool in sustainable economic recovery.

Procure4Health is an EU project that aims to overcome the barriers to EU-wide adoption of innovation procurement by creating an open community of health&care procurement stakeholders. Its 33 founding partners are actively promoting innovation procurement through knowledge sharing and capacity building, networking and matchmaking, identification of common needs and the launch of joint actions to address them as well as influencing policy on procurement of innovation.

Prepare aims at creating new, more effective and sustainable policies and instruments that promote the adoption of impactful innovation, including via innovation procurement, at regional level, but also relevant and scalable across Europe.

The main goal of innovation adoption is to encourage the development of innovative solutions capable of enhancing services and addressing nowadays’ challenges. It acts as a facilitator for investments in the real economy, driving innovation and digitization to overcome existing barriers and promote transformative actions.
By aligning regional efforts with European priorities, the partners are poised to make significant advances in promoting sustainable growth, job creation, and improving services.