More sharing, more awareness, more training, more instruments and tools able to promote Public Procurement of Innovation.

These are just some of the desires shared by the different participants in the seminar run by ANI and IMPIC, in partnership with the European projects Procure2Innovate and iBuy, held on 16 October this year at the National Civil Engineering Laboratory: “Capacity building a driver for IPP transnational cooperation”. This event brought together about 70 people from 14 EU member states.

The different participants were challenged to share their 2020 goals for Public Procurement of Innovation.  The results of this activity summarise the main needs and the main challenges experienced by those involved in public procurement of innovation projects and processes.

Based on the experiences shared by the participants, 2020 will be a year full of many different aims: examining the concept of Public Procurement of Innovation in greater depth, and providing more clarifications; defining the goals and necessary procedures in greater details; designing new paths to make solution and support instruments feasible.

Another contribution that stood out for having been mentioned several times is related to the search for more training and specialisation, as well as the setting up of new competence centres to enable a greater exchange of ideas, experience and best practices. 
Other shared objectives are a better use of public money, greater stability in funding and increasingly promoting the interests of public entities in the subject.

Although all very different, all of the proposed goals have a common denominator: all admit that public procurement of innovation is an essential vehicle for building a more sustainable and more developed society. For this reason all of the suggested goals intend to examine this subject more deeply with the aim of implementing it and making it effective in society.

Public Procurement of Innovation will continue to be a priority for ANI and IMPIC in 2020, as the mission of these entities is to develop actions aimed at stimulating innovation in Portugal through public procurement processes.