14 June 2018
On 12-13 June 2018, the Procure2Innovate consortium held its second partner meeting in Cork, Ireland, gathering representatives from 17 partner organisations across Europe. Hosted by Ireland’s Procurement Transformation Institute at University College Cork, the meeting focused on early progress in the Procure2Innovate project – a breakthrough initiative aiming to boost innovation procurement across the continent.
The project’s 10 innovation procurement competence centres provided updates to the consortium, with special attention on the progress made in ‘newcomer’ countries; those such as Ireland and Portugal.
Along with those in Estonia, Greece and Italy, these new competence centres will drive the new growth in innovation procurement in Europe, adding to efforts by established competence centres in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.
“Here we have focused in detail on the first activities of the five new competence centres within the Procure2Inonvate network,” said P2I project co-ordinator Marlene Grauer.
“At this stage we can see the real importance of effectively setting up implementation strategies for the new competence centres. This means thinking in particular about how they are embedded in policy.”
During the meeting, the consortium was also able to connect with Irish procurers at TenderCon, a major Irish procurement event connecting stakeholders from across Europe, and held this year at University College Cork as part of a week of public procurement-related activities.
“With the Procure2Innovate consortium here in Cork, we have been able to give Irish procurers a truly European perspective on innovation procurement,” said Ms Grauer.
In Ireland, the public procurement budget in Ireland is estimated to be worth up to EUR 9 billion per year, but only 10% of Irish small- and medium-sized enterprises compete for tenders.
Image copyright: Image by "Mark Dalton"