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The acquisition of innovation by public and private organisations enables better and more efficient service delivery to citizens and customers. These organisations can acquire innovation via direct procurement from the market when a mature solution is available. However, frequently public and private buyers have unmet needs that require innovative solutions that are not yet in the market.
There are several instruments aimed to design and test innovative solutions in collaboration with external suppliers. Yet, these instruments are oriented towards big groups of buyers and solutions that require big investments. In addition, there is a (big) administrative burden associated with its launch, execution and justification. This discourages some buyers to use them when the solution requires quicker execution times or fewer economic resources, due to the scope and characteristics of the unmet need.
InnoBuyer is a coordination and support action, funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, with a total budget of 2 million euros. It aims to become a testing ground and benchmark towards the implementation of a demand-driven methodology that brings together Challengers (public and private organisations) and Solvers (notably European Innovation Council-supported SMEs), to jointly co-create innovative solutions, and speed-up the process leading to a concrete innovation procurement.
The InnoBuyer consortium will launch a dissemination campaign to recruit unmet needs from Challengers and then select the 15 best candidates. Other interested public and private Challengers will be aggregated to the selected challenges so they can also acquire knowledge along the project.
The selected Challengers will be supported to launch an Open Market Consultation to receive feedback on their challenges, and recruit and award Solvers to answer the proposed challenges.
Challengers and Solvers will jointly co-create solutions to the challenges. The solutions will be tested and evaluated. Solvers will receive support towards the future commercialization of their solutions.
Support the creation of ToRs in collaboration with external experts, as the base for a future tender for the solution by the Challengers.
F6S is the leading SME network and platform for application management for commercial, corporate, government, university and other accelerator programs, helping thousands of such initiatives worldwide. Every year F6S processes more than 100,000 applications and has delivered billions of Euros to startups and SMEs.
F6S is experienced in creating effective recruitment campaigns, targeting the right SMEs/Startups, disseminating open calls far and wide and managing the selection process of the applicants. F6S tracks emerging trends across industries and has insights that reach beyond any database, from its strong network of project partners, corporates, universities & startups. F6S’ innovative communication team leverages these assets and a strong experience in community building to deliver a high-impact strategy to promote, communicate, and disseminate research activities and achievements, maximising sustainability of projects’ results.
CIVITTA helps their clients from private companies to governments, non-profits and startups to challenge their own industries by becoming more innovative, efficient and dynamic. With 380+ consultants CIVITTA is present in 18 European countries.
Its mission is to promote intercultural dialogue, social entrepreneurship and social inclusion through sports, formal and non-formal education including disadvantaged groups such as migrants and people with disabilities.
Join the EIC Community here
The European Innovation Council (EIC) was established by the European Commission in 2021 following a 3 years successful pilot phase. It has a mission to identify, develop and scale up breakthrough technologies and disruptive innovation. It has a budget of over €10 billion for the period 2021-2027.
The funding and support is organised into three main funding schemes covering all technology readiness levels: EIC Pathfinder for advanced research to develop the scientific basis to underpin breakthrough technologies; EIC Transition to validate technologies and develop business plans for specific applications; and the EIC Accelerator to support companies (SMEs, start-ups, spin-outs and in exceptional cases small mid-caps) to bring their innovations to market and scale up. The Accelerator provides a combination of grant support and direct equity investments in companies through a dedicated EIC Fund, which also provides a platform for co-investments with other investors.
For all schemes, the direct financial support is augmented with access to a range of Business Acceleration Services.
The strategy and implementation of the EIC is overseen by the EIC Board of twenty individuals from the innovation ecosystem (academia, business, investment, ecosystem builders). The EIC also employs dedicated Programme Managers with high level expertise in their fields, to set the challenges and proactively manage portfolios of projects towards technological breakthroughs.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement 101071212.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
