iBuy is making a progress in the area of public procurement of innovation (PPI). Best practice identified by project’s coordinator Lithuanian Innovation centre has been selected to be presented in Interreg Europe webinar on PPI. Mantas Vilys, the director of Lithuanian Innovation Centre, has presented pre-commercial procurement support scheme in Lithuania that provides financial support to the public institutions to procure R&D services and develop innovative products.


Under this measure up to 85% of the value of the project may be given to the contracting authority and the remaining 15% has to be financed by the contracting authority and project partners.


Depending on the stage at which the contracting authority starts pre-commercial procurement, the participants may receive funding to: 1) creation and approval of the concept of innovative products (stage I); 2) creation of a prototype of an innovative product (stage II); 3) pilot of innovative product, which may include the purchases of an innovative product (stage III).


The form of financing with this measure is a non-refundable subsidy.


Along with this practice, two more initiatives (one on how to incorporate PPI in regional S3 and the other one on Innovative Public Procurement Office) have been presented during webinar to explore good practices from selected Interreg Europe projects and facilitate networking between projects and participants.

The recording of the whole webinar is available here.