Elvira Uyarra

Understanding the Innovation Impacts of Public Procurement

Public procurement accounts for a significant proportion of overall demand for goods and services and is increasingly seen as an attractive and feasible instrument for furthering the goals of innovation policy. However, public procurement is already expected to address a wide range of social goals. Much of the current debate about harnessing procurement to promote innovation draws upon a limited set of examples which are not representative of the bulk of public purchasing and tend to downplay diversity in procurement practices and in the types of goods and services procured. They also downplay diversity in the nature of innovations and in the range of ways that procurement can impact upon innovation. A one-size-fits-all model is unlikely to work across all procurement contexts yet all types of public procurement are likely to have impacts upon innovation by shaping the demand environment in which suppliers innovate and compete. We propose a framework and typology based on the nature of the goods and services procured in order to explore the potential impacts upon markets and innovation of each. We conclude that public purchasing should first and foremost remain concerned with proximate public policy goals and that, rather than trying to co-opt public procurement into the innovation policy toolbox, policy-makers should focus on promoting innovation-friendly practices across all types of procurement at all levels of governance.

Conceptualizing the Regional Roles of Universities, Implications and Contradictions

The impact of universities on the economic wellbeing and innovative potential of regions has been the object of intense scholarly and policy interest in the last years. Despite this interest, a clear picture is missing in relation to the roles universities are seen to play, the benefits of university activities and the mechanisms through which they occur. This paper proposes a review and a critique of current views on the role of universities and their associated policy implications. To achieve this, the paper identifies five “models” for universities as they are reflected in the literature, each advocating different set of roles of universities, different spatial aspects of interactions, as well as different mechanisms for university engagement. National and regional innovation and research policies tend to explicitly or implicitly reflect one or a combination of several of these models, giving rise to potential contradictions or conflicts of policy rationales and objectives.

From Regional Systems of Innovation to Regions as Innovation Policy Spaces

The regional systems of innovation concept is well established in academic and practitioner discourses about innovation and economic development. As with the innovation systems approach more generally, the use of the concept has expanded significantly from its initial analytical purpose and has been extensively used to inform policy making. We identify a number of dangers associated with the use of regional systems of innovation as a normative concept which both overstates and at the same time underemphasises the roles regions play as policy-making and implementation spaces. These issues are explored in the paper with an illustration of the North West region of England.

Public procurement for innovation

Public procurement can support innovative businesses in several ways: it can stimulate innovation by creating a demand for innovative products or services, help innovative firms bridge the precommercialisation gap for their innovative products and services by awarding contracts for precommercial innovations (i.e. first sales of technology), help them achieve the critical mass needed to bring prices down and be competitive, and contribute to making access to private third-party funding easier. Evidence of the impacts of public procurement on innovation is still scarce, and the conclusions are mixed . Many OECD countries have shown a growing interest in public procurement policies in recent years. Thus, public procurement can provide critical support to investments in innovation and complement other types of finance. . Public policy can foster innovative businesses by reducing developing expertise and integrating new competencies within public administration to design and monitor innovation-oriented procurement, and by stimulating innovation-oriented public procurement within public agencies. Public policy should also address the risks associated with innovation-oriented public procurement and balance the multiple goals of public procurement in order to sustain its support of innovative businesses.

Four dangers in innovation policy studies – and how to avoid them

Abstract The field of innovation policy studies is at a crossroads. It has clearly been influential. However, might it be losing the critical insight necessary to remain so in future? We discuss four dangerous tendencies seen in many innovation policy studies: idealising policy rationales and policy-makers; treating policies as tools from a toolbox; putting too much faith in coordination and intelligent design of ‘policy mixes’; and taking an atemporal approach to innovation policy. Based on these we identify some ways forward that, we argue, would deal better with the complex multi-actor dynamics, fundamental uncertainties and challenges to the implementation, coordination and evaluation of policies and which would make for more relevant and impactful innovation policy studies.

A role for public procurement in system innovation: The transformation of the Greater Manchester (UK) waste system

The transformation of socio-technical systems to more sustainable states is more policy induced than market driven. Reflecting this, the potential for governments to direct system transformation has been widely debated. However, this debate concentrates on supply side policies and under analyses the potential for public buyers to steer system innovation. This paper draws from ideas on system innovation, transition management and public procurement to explore how a major public buyer was able to do just this. The paper describes the transformation of the Greater Manchester (UK) waste system from a relatively simple landfill model to a highly complex, multi-technology solution of intensive recycling, composting and energy production. The paper draws three main conclusions: (1) it is possible to orchestrate system innovation through public procurement in certain circumstances; (2) this involves developing the required interdependencies between technologies, institutions and practices; (3) system transformation can be orchestrated from within the incumbent regime.

Inter-regional Collaboration in Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3). S3 Working Paper Series no 6/2014

The objective of this Smart Specialisation (S3) Platform Working Paper is to examine the role of inter-regional collaboration in national or regional Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3). It provides a conceptualisation of inter-regional collaboration within the framework of RIS3. It draws from the literature on innovation policy to develop an analytical framework to better understand the multiple dimensions of inter-regional collaboration, namely the why, what, where, who and how of collaboration; and explores how inter-regional collaboration varies according to the six steps of the RIS3 process. Finally, it looks at experiences of inter-regional collaboration for innovation in the Baltic Sea region within this framework.

Anchoring the innovation impacts of public procurement to place: The role of conversations:

Public procurement is frequently touted as a means of promoting innovation at the sub-national level, but the underlying mechanisms through which this is supposed to work are seldom articulated. In particular, while the relevance of social interaction for innovation is offered as a key rationale for the use of public procurement for innovation, there is little discussion of its corresponding spatial dimensions. This paper contributes to this debate by advancing our understanding of the spatial aspects of public procurement for innovation and thus of the scope for using public procurement to achieve regional innovation policy goals. We connect the public procurement for innovation literature with the literatures on innovation-driven regional development around the notion of ‘conversations’ to capture the spatial and social aspects of interactions relevant for public procurement for innovation. Different forms of spatial anchoring of procurement are explored, presenting different challenges and opportunities for regions. We provide illustrative examples for each type, from which suggestions are derived for promoting place-based ‘innovation-friendly’ procurement.

Multi level policy mixes and industry emergence: The case of wind energy in Spain

The prospect of limited access to natural resources has reignited the debate on environmental sustainability and the search for appropriate policy instruments. Alternative and sustainable models of production and consumption encompass both wholly new solutions as well as modified versions of existing ones. The objective of this paper is to understand to what extent instruments designed at different levels of policy domains can be coordinated as part of an organic process. The empirical setting for our inquiry is the Spanish wind energy sector, a successful trajectory in terms of both energy and specialised technology production. Spain has become the first country in which wind energy was the major source of energy and the second performing European R&D energy projects. This dual acceleration in market deployment and knowledge creation is the result of multiple pathways originated by the interplay of policy instruments of different domains such as energy, industry and innovation interacting at regional, national and European level. The present paper seeks to understand the development of the policy mix underpinning the emergence of the Spanish wind energy sector. Our approach is mostly historical and draws on official data on energy balance, subsidies, research activity and interviews. The analysis presented here confirms that while international commitments act as a guiding force, national and regional governments play a key role in the sector development by providing market signals, financial support and mechanisms to articulate different actors and their capacities. This gives rise to distinctive implementation patterns across regions and pose important coordination challenges. On the whole the present case study provides a novel insight into the interplay between multi-level public intervention and the articulation of systemic dynamics of a new market as well as a critical reflection on the research policy challenges associated to the emergence of new sectors.

Risk management in public procurement of innovation: a conceptualization

This book focuses on Public Procurement for Innovation. Public Procurement for Innovation is a specific demand-side innovation policy instrument. It occurs when a public organization places an order for a new or improved product to fulfill certain needs that cannot be met at the moment of the order. The book provides evidence of the potential benefits to public and private actors from the selective use of this policy instrument and illustrates the requirements and constraints for its operationalization. The book intends to significantly improve the understanding of key determinants of effective public procurement aiming to promote innovative capabilities in the supplying sectors and beyond. It provides both case studies and conceptual contributions that help extend the frontier of our understanding in areas where there are still significant gaps.