Playing the game of public procurement of innovation: Experiences from a University Course

Given the emergence and diffusion of policies aiming at promoting the utilisation of public procurement as an innovation policy instrument, it is remarkable that very little scholarly attention has been given to the teaching of public procurement of innovation. This paper sets out to contribute towards mending this gap, by discussing some considerations made in the context of the development and set up of a university course in public procurement of innovation. A major challenge for such an endeavour is how to bring the complexities of real-life public procurement into a university class-room setting in a way that makes sense to students with relatively modest experiences from professional contexts. This challenge was taken on by introducing three different public procurement of innovation games in the curriculum, as presented in the paper.