Public Procurement of Innovation in Sweden

Sweden is often thought of as a country with a strong tradition for using
public procurement as a means to stimulate innovation. Early on, Sweden recognized
and developed procedures for using public procurement as a technologydevelopment
tool. After a period where emphasis was put on this aspect of public
procurement Sweden dropped many policy initiatives within this field. This was in
part due to neo-liberal movements during the 1980s which in interaction with a
distributed institutional setup led to the removal of incentives for a procuring
authority to engage in public procurement of innovation. Another contributing
cause was poor policy guidance from the academia upon Sweden’s accession into
the EU, which spread apprehension among procuring authorities. It is not until the last few years that Sweden has started to reengage in public procurement for
innovation policy, by using predominantly government authorities to engage in
public procurement for innovation, and by issuing guidance on the topic.