Joint Public Procurement and Innovation

Innovation in public procurement is essential for sustainable and inclusive
growth in an increasingly globalized economy. To achieve that potential, both
the promises and the perils of innovation must be investigated, including the
risks and opportunities of joint procurement across borders in the European
Union and the United States.

This in-depth research investigates innovation in public procurement from
three different perspectives. First, leading academics and practitioners
assess the purchase of innovation, with a particular focus on urban public
contracting in smart cities involving meta-infrastructures, public-private
partnership arrangements and smart contracts. A second line of inquiry looks
for ways to encourage innovative suppliers. Here, the collected authors draw
on emerging lessons from the US and Europe, to explore both the costs and the
benefits of spurring innovation through procurement.

A third perspective looks to various innovations in the procurement process
itself, with a focus on the effects of joint and cross-border procurement in
the EU and US landscapes. The chapters review new technologies and platforms,
the increasingly automated means of selecting suppliers, and the related
efficiencies that “big data” can bring to public procurement.

Expanding on research in the editors’ prior volume, Integrity and Efficiency
in Sustainable Public Contracts: Balancing Corruption Concerns in Public
Procurement Internationally (Bruylant 2014), this volume builds on a series of
academic conferences and exchanges to address these issues from sophisticated
academic, institutional and practical perspectives, and to point the way to
future research on the contractual models that are emerging from new
procurement technologies.