Innovation contest vs. innovation procurement

Purpose and goal

Goal- to find the success factors and pitfalls in forming a model of innovation procurement based on innovation contests. Success factors:providers with an attitude of understanding the needs,evaluation criterias related to creativity and design competence. To support this process the procurers will need further competence. Pitfalls:change management is difficult - you know what you have, but not what you get, leadership is a key word. These are some of the comments from the network meeting. The further discussion about contest vs. procurement will be carried out in the network.

Results and expected effects

The objective has been to identify the needs, actual problem issues and stakeholders to help overlapping the gap between innovation and implementation. Focus has been on building a national network of innovation procurers. Such a network has been formed withe the goal of inspiration and knowledge exchange as well as joint feasibility studies. Implementation of the winning submissions will take place from the winners trip to Sweden in December 2014 to October 2015. But the 15 winners are already presented to a network of possible future partners in order to facilitate the process.

Approach and implementation

The project has carried out contact and interviews with important stakeholders before and after a network meeting with the goal to form a national group of procurers. In open innovation contests like SLC the need of stakeholders participation in formulating the challenge, focus on the user perspective, an active network and a clear project leadership responsible for information to all stakeholders. Another method is to formulate a more defined problem area as a base for an innovation contest and let the contestant and their solutions be a part of the innovation procurement.