Innovation Procurement Hubs

The purpose of this tender is to purchase support services for public authorities wishing to establish public procurement of innovation initiatives in a form of innovation procurement hubs. Through this service, public administrations who want to implement a variation of an innovation procurement hub (or even experiment in launching an innovation challenge for the first time), set up an innovation procurement programme, or similar, will benefit from the direct support of the contractor in establishing such an initiative, but also from lessons learnt of those administrations which have already advanced expertise in the matter. These hubs will serve as laboratories (living labs and incubators) in which the actual challenges and needs of public bodies are confronted and challenged with possible innovative solutions coming from start-ups and entrepreneurs.

The objective is to set a strong link between innovators and public administration in areas like mobility, green and digital transition, health, education (…), but also to develop new purchasing practices that will help the creation of future markets for SMEs and start-ups, among others. Moreover, after its establishment, a specific local innovation procurement hub can benefit from an EEA wide network for the exchange of (market) knowledge, and experiences, having an infrastructure at hand in which it is easy and less resource intensive to team up on shared topics with other hubs. Equally so, the contracting authorities wishes to explore potential building of a digital infrastructure where innovation challenges from all the EEA can be co-published.