OZS organized online webinar for solution providers

The webinar intitled Public ordering of innovations from the point of view of solution and service providers, including a presentation of the implemented public procurement procedure, held on 17/1/2024, aimed at encouraging participants to participate in future innovation procurement procedures, presented the basics of innovation procurement with a practical example of an innovation procurement process. The lecturer Denis Premec is an expert who, together with the project team, prepared and implemented the first innovation procurement procedure in Croatia, which was also presented at the seminar.

Ordering innovations

Innovation procurement refers to a procurement process that may involve the purchase of the process of an innovation (pre-commercial procurement) or the purchase of the results of an innovation (innovation procurement). When purchasing an innovation process, the customer orders research and development of new innovative solutions before they are available (commercially) on the market, according to its needs. These are products, services and processes that do not yet exist and need to be developed anew. Whereas the purchase of the results of an innovation is about products or services that already exist, are ready for the market and are already available on a small, non-commercial scale.

An example of good practice

The lecturer introduced participants to the basic aspects of public procurement of innovation and demonstrated the preparation of a public procurement procedure through a practical example. As a good practice example, a kindergarten in Croatia was described, which was in a very poor state of repair and therefore suitable for demolition, but which was improved and transformed into a modern childcare building with the help of an innovative solution (innovation procurement). The process followed a three-step approach: needs identification, where the problem was precisely defined and the needs and requirements defined, followed by market engagement, which involved market research, communication with providers, advertising the need and analysis of information, and finally, pro-innovation tendering, where solution providers provided innovative but different solutions on equal terms. 

The lecturer emphasized that the most important thing for solution providers is to upgrade their initial innovation (idea) so that it is also applicable elsewhere and therefore attracts wider interest from solution and service providers.