Intermediation in Public Procurement of Innovation for Technology Transfer Purposes

Public procurement of innovation (PPI) has been developed in a European context during the last decade topursue innovation generation and diffusion. Despite having a considerable share of 10-20% in GDPs, thepotential has not yet been tapped in developing and less developed contexts, where the primary focus is ontechnology transfer and catch-up instead of innovation development.As a multi-case study of public procurement of high-tech products in oil industry of Iran, the present studyattempts to identify challenges of intermediation between public procurer and supply side with a focus ontechnology transfer needs. The methodology was consisted of semi-structured interviews with practitioners andacademicians and also content analysis, besides direct involvement in the tenders. The four roles of broker,content expert, trainer and performer advised for intermediation in PPI were found to be similarly applicableinto and useful for technology transfer-oriented PPI. But, three major distinctions were also identified, including1) a throughout focus on evaluation, monitoring and promotion of technological, manufacturing andorganisational capabilities (TRL, MRL and CRL) of the supply-side, rather than on innovative solutions as isthe case in usual PPI; 2) internal disruption in public procurer due to changing legal requirements, new tendermonitoring and evaluation processes and criteria, risk management, rather than due to introduction of innovativeproducts; and 3) no need to formulation of needs and conversion of them into functional requirements orproduct specifications, which consists an important initial step in usual PPI. In sum, this effort could be considered as a preliminary step toward conceptualisation of ―technology transfer-oriented PPI‖ (TT-PPI),based on the established concept of ―public procurement for innovation‖ (PPI). The results could help customiseand localise literature advancements regarding intermediation structure in alignment with technology transferneeds of developing countries, and locally help bottom-up implementation of the National Technology Annexrecently adopted in Iran.

keywords: Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI); Technology Transfer; Innovation Intermediation; Technology Annex to Tenders, Multi-case Study; Oil Industry of Iran

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