Procurement is often perceived as highly boring and bureaucratic. But it is a massive opportunity. Public sector spending, in the UK only, is about 400 billion pounds a year. In Europe we are talking about trillions of euros.

Nowadays the public sector is facing more challenges than ever before (after Covid, climate emergence, child and social care, security, …) and it has to do it with tight finances. Public organizations have to deliver better, cheaper, and quicker outcomes.

How does the public sector spend money? In the UK 21% of tenders have a single bidder. Why? It is really hard to engage with the public sector, particularly if we refer to innovation.
Rather than prescribing, public organizations should be much more open to the market with the problems they want to solve. They should lower the barriers to entry, bring innovation in and work with diverse suppliers (startups, scaleups, academic span-outs, corporate open innovation depts, …). Public Procurement is not about being first, being an inventor, rather be an intelligent client. 

If you try to do something from scratch, it always costs more. On the contrary, you can derisk by bringing innovation from outside.It Given the budget they have, the Public Sector can really help shaping the innovation ecosystems.

That’s the reason why the Innovation Procurement Empowerment Centre (IPEC) – a Connected Places Catapult project - introduced a Special Award as part of Startup Ecosystem Stars Awards 2024 aimed to recognize and celebrate the most innovative initiatives within the public sector.

This and more in this Mind the Chat with Rikesh Shah - Head of IPE and former Head of Open Innovation at Transport for London (TFL), interviewed by our Chairman Alberto Onetti.