Barriers to innovation through public procurement: A supplier perspective

By Elvira Uyarra, J. Edler, Javier García-Estévez, Luke Georghiou, J. Yeow. 2014

386 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Public procurement is increasingly viewed as having important potential to drive innovation. Despite this interest, numerous barriers prevent the public sector from acting as an intelligent and informed customer. This paper seeks to understand how barriers related to processes, competences, procedures and relationships in public procurement influence suppliers׳ ability to innovate and to reap the benefits of innovation. We address this by exploiting a dedicated survey of public sector suppliers in the UK, using a probit model to investigate the influence of structural, market and innovation determinants on suppliers׳ perception of these barriers. The main barriers reported by suppliers refer to the lack of interaction with procuring organisations, the use of over-specified tenders as opposed to outcome based specifications, low competences of procurers and a poor management of risk during the procurement process. Such barriers are perceived most strongly by R&D intensive organisations. Our results also indicate that certain organisations, particularly smaller firms and not-forprofit organisations, encounter greater difficulties with innovation arising from the procurement process, for instance in relation to contract size, lack of useful feedback and communication of opportunities. Government procurement policies are queried in light of the findings.

Subfields: Management Information Systems, Management Science and Operations Research, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9c351448bbaa2c90dfb4ef90d6b43c7b19faeca3

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In Management Information Systems

In Management Science and Operations Research

In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

No money, no honey? Financial versus knowledge and demand constraints on innovation (2017, background): “There has been some interest in demand-side innovation policy (OECD, 2011; see also Uyarra, 2013; Uyarra et al., 2014).”
Supply chain management and the circular economy: towards the circular supply chain (2018, positive): “Both private and public sectors could act as levers for change, particularly the public sector with its large purchasing power (Walker and Brammer, 2012) by stimulating demand for more sustainable products and services (Uyarra et al., 2014).”
Exploiting the Potential of Public Procurement: Opportunities for Circular Economy (2019, background): “…need to improve and adopt novel skills, internal coordination and management practices, and link different stakeholders to the procurement process (e.g., Testa et al. 2016; Valovirta 2015; Edler and Uyarra 2013; Edler and Yeow 2016; Edquist et al. 2015; Uyarra et al. 2014; Rolfstam et al. 2011).”
Public procurement, innovation and industrial policy: Rationales, roles, capabilities and implementation (2020, background): “Despite much interest in the barriers and challenges around the use of PPI (Uyarra et al., 2014), little attention has been paid to the institutionalisation and mainstreaming of this policy innovation.”