Prof Geo Quinot, Director of APPRRU, participated again in the Welsh Procurement Week 2015 organised by Bangor University’s Institute for Competition & Procurement Studies (ICPS) from 16 to 20 March 2015. The week-long event included discussion of various aspects of public procurement law, policy and practice and culminated in the National Welsh Procurement Awards 2015.
Prof Geo Quinot addressing Procurement Week 2015
Quinot delivered a paper that focused on the link between innovation and procurement. In it he argued that:
“There seems to be strong evidence and subsequent growing consensus that public procurement can be a very significant factor in supporting broad-based innovation and that this is a very promising tool that states have available to support innovation. The sheer volume of public procurement and the possibility to tailor that significant buying power towards innovative outcomes result in a powerful demand-side measure in support of innovation, a mechanism that any economy that is serious about innovation cannot ignore. However, from a regulatory point of view there are numerous questions that will have to be carefully considered in order to calibrate a procurement system to achieve maximum innovation policy objectives. In some respects these are fairly fundamental questions about how we conceptualise the procurement function in law and how we subsequently design the institutional framework within which this function operates.”
Quinot’s presentation can be viewed at this link.
More details on Procurement Week 2015 are available here.