The Call for Challengers is closed

For public and private organisations with challenges to solve

Applications closed on the 31st of March 2023 at 17:00 CET

In a world of never-ending changes, your organisation's capacity to quickly answer to new challenges is key for its success. But these challenges can be so specific that you may not have the expertise and resources to address them, nor find a suitable external solution for your need. This is when you consider looking for an innovator to co-develop a new solution.
And with this approach, a set of questions arises:

How do you define and describe your challenge to ensure it is properly understood by the innovator?
How do you find innovative companies with the best expertise and resources to solve your problem?
How do you monitor and evaluate the innovators’ progress?
And if you manage to co-develop a good solution, how do you conceptualize and create Terms or Reference for a simplified Innovation Procurement?

This is where the InnoBuyer programme comes into play, presenting you with an innovative model: a fast, sponsored and secure model of innovation procurement.

How does it work

InnoBuyer programme will fund activities under four different actions. The Challengers selected to take part in the programme will get support from the InnoBuyer consortium to further define their unmet needs and translate them into a challenge (Action 1), that can be launched in a call for innovation suppliers/Solvers.

Once the best Solver for each particular challenge gets selected (Action 2), Challengers and Solvers will co-create and pilot an innovative solution (Action 3). If by the end of the process the solution shows promising results, Challengers will receive support to launch an innovation procurement procedure (Action 4) for the wide adoption of the solution.

Action 1:
Identification and selection of challenges

Identification of the unmet need, and design the challenge specifications to find the best innovation suppliers.

Recruitment of other buyers with a similar need to the one proposed.

Action 2:
Open Market Consultation

Implementation of a market consultation on the proposed challenge, as well as the recruitment and selection of innovative SMEs via open call.

Selection of the best solution or SME.