On 14 December the European Innovation Council (EIC) offered 7 EIC innovators the opportunity to pitch in front of members from the Procure2Innovate (P2I)-network. The 7 attending EIC innovators pitched their Intensive Care Unit-related innovations to over 50 healthcare procurers from Austria, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Portugal and Finland.
The Procure2Innovate project aims to improve institutional support for public procurers purchasing information and communication technologies (ICT), as well as acquiring products and services from a range of sectors that implement innovation procurement. The project has also established a P2I Network to further disseminate its knowledge and attract new members. After the event, we got together P2Imembers Marlene Grauer, from BME eV., and Anastasia Zacharopoulou, from the Greek Ministry of Development and Investment, to talk about innovation procurement.
What can you tell us about your approach to innovation procurement?
Marlene, BME: We come from a very demanding innovation-focused perspective. We want to make sure that if we bring companies, buyers and suppliers together, there’s a true and authentic demand. If the suppliers have the experience, and we invite them to matchmaking activities, we want to ensure that there’s a true business follow-up. In other words, that we are able to get into risky interactions that go hand in hand with innovation procurement.
Anastasia, Mindev: Innovation procurement is an important political topic for us. These last years we have developed the Greek competence centre by participating in P2I. In addition, we have already developed synergies with the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation in our Ministry, in order to help contracting authorities promote innovation procurement.
What were the main reasons for joining the EIC for this event?
Marlene, BME: From the perspective of the national competence centres it is a way of bringing activities that normally happen at a national level to a European level. We, as a network, have been trying to strengthen networks between themselves, to ensure that we have a more European response. Now, we can do this with a European institution, the EIC, offering greater access to innovations for our buyers.
Anastasia, Mindev: Firstly, the EIC is an organisation that has great dynamics towards innovative companies and that is a big innovation player in Europe. It’s a great partner for us and all the competence centres. We are very glad to have the EIC with us in this attempt to promote innovation procurement in Greece.
Secondly, the challenges we posed are very important to our buyers. The Greek hospitals were very eager to receive European solutions to them to ensure the best possible outcomes.
What were your impressions of the event itself and the 7 EIC innovators that pitched?
Marlene, BME: We managed to have over 50 procurers attending, which was fantastic. Despite this being a new concept for many of them, you could see they were excited by the opportunity. For us, the questions posed by the EIC innovators were very interesting. We could better understand what we as procurers need to put our effort into. You could tell that the EIC companies were interested in the decision-making process, and what kind of councils or groups are behind them.
Besides the interest from the EIC companies themselves, the quality of the pitches was excellent. They know how to talk to their target audience, in this case, public hospitals.
Anastasia, Mindev: Firstly, we were impressed with how quickly EIC managed to find these suitable partners for our challenges. It was a successful event, because of the great participation of the procurers and the interesting questions of the EIC innovators. The companies that took part were very to the point as to what their innovations do and how sustainable it is. It was very encouraging that there were plenty of mature solutions offered.
On a final note, what advice can you give to startups and scaleups that would like to work with procurers?
Marlene, BME: If you’re a company that’s looking at the European market, going to European brokers, like P2I, can be helpful. A competence centre is also a great point of entry because it will help you understand the national market and manage the different rules and lingo that come with each national market.
Anastasia, Mindev: As my colleague mentioned, it’s a good idea to get in touch with the competence centres for innovation procurement. They can promote and help the companies to contact procurers and pave the way.
EIC Business Acceleration Services
This opportunity is brought to you by the EIC Business Acceleration Services. If you’re looking for opportunities to connect with some of the largest public and private procurers of innovation in Europe, make sure to check our events calendar often to grab the best opportunity to take your business to the next level.
