The InnoBuyer Call for Challengers aims to select 15 public and private entities with unmet innovation needs, from any sector, to join the InnoBuyer programme that offers funding support, expertise, and connections, to speed-up all the steps from the identification of unmet innovation needs to the procurement of innovation, including the co-creation of solutions with innovative companies, in order to deliver better and more efficient services to citizens and customers.

Public and private organisations (Challengers) can apply for InnoBuyer, proposing up to 4 unmet innovation needs. Grants of up to €41.5k are funded by the European Commission.

The 15 selected entities will join the Innobuyer programme to participate in 4 support actions:

•  Action #1: Expertise and 10.000€ funding support to develop a ‘Challenge Description’ which represents an improved version of the initially submitted unmet need, considering inputs from other relevant departments in the organisation such as IT, legal, and management, among others. The aim is to have business-oriented wording that can be appealing and well understood by innovative SMEs, to feed the Call for Solvers (Action #2).
•  Action #2: Training and 10.000€ funding support to learn and adopt the latest methodologies on sourcing and market consultation, attend market dialogue sessions to share unmet needs with potential Solvers and identify interesting solutions in e-pitching sessions, among other opportunities to connect Challengers and Solvers. The InnoBuyer consortium will launch an open call to attract innovative SMEs to propose solutions to the challenges developed in Action #1, and Challengers are expected to actively participate in the evaluation and selection of Solvers and corresponding proposed solutions.
•  Action #3: (Only for public organisations) Monitoring and up to 6.500€ funding support to co-create, deploy, test and assess a pilot, in collaboration with an innovative SME, to address the unmet innovation need described in Action #1 with a Solver selected in Action #2. (The Solver can get up to 58.500€ to develop the pilot.)
•  Action #4: (Only for public organisations) Legal expertise and 15.000€ funding support to design and deliver Terms of Reference (ToR) for a simplified form of innovation procurement, to acquire the solution developed in Action #3.

The InnoBuyer call for challengers is open until 17:00 CET on 31 March 2023.

More information is available here