Photo by Micky Hoyle 19

The Swedish Government is in the process of formulating a National Strategy for Public Procurement, where procurement that enhances innovations will be an important part. Innovation-related public procurement has been discussed at two of the four meetings of the Swedish National Innovation Council during 2015. The work with the national strategy is coordinated by the Ministry of Finance, which organized a hearing in early December 2015 – in which Charles participated. The topic of the hearings was the content of the strategy, e.g. how the innovation potential of public procurement can be “liberated”. Charles has previously argued that the best way to enhance innovation through public procurement is to formulate the requirements or specifications for the procurement in functional terms rather than in product terms. Problems that shall be solved rather than products shall be described. In this way public procurement becomes “innovation-friendly” rather than constituting an obstacle to innovation. Charles has previously addressed this issue in publications such as:

• http://www.konkurrensverket.se/globalassets/publikationer/uppdragsforskning/forsk_rap_2014-5.pdf
• https://charlesedquist.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/20141206-tiden.pdf
• https://charlesedquist.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/201508-cwp-28.pdf
• https://charlesedquist.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/2015-ppi.pdf