Region of Murcia
Spain
Regional
context
Murcia Region is a Moderate Innovator region in Spain. The business environment is innovative, open and competitive, providing a perfect ground for traditional companies, multinational corporations and young entrepreneurs to operate and expand their businesses. Region of Murcia is also known as home to internationally recognized research teams in healthcare, biotechnology and agrifood sciences, with several technological clusters and multinational enterprises in sectors like agrifood, logistics, energy, manufacturing, and engineering sectors.
Alignment with RIS3 strategy
Back in 2014, Murcia’s RIS3 already incorporated Innovation Procurement among its main lines.
Actually, one of the strategic objectives of the updated 2021-27 RIS4, is to promote innovation among the public sector with an “Innovative Public Procurement” program. The main priority areas are agrifood (including water management and environment), marine and maritime industry, energy and chemical industry, transport and logistics, habitat, tourism and healthcare.
Within this framework, PCP projects such as ProEmpower, have been implemented. Additionally, Murcia region has been fully involved in projects related to Demand driven innovation including inDemand, inDemand RTC CHERRIES and HealthChain.
Importance of PREPARE for the region
In the Region of Murcia there are different centres that act independently, replicating in a way the guilds that existed 50 years ago, which was a model that worked very well then, but not now. There is a need for greater transversality in these services to support and promote innovation. Therefore, PREPARE’s project is a game-changer for Murcia’s Region, as part of the strategy of creating impact through the collaboration between public organizations and companies to jointly develop innovative solutions.
Regional Partners
Ticbiomed is a Spanish association that promotes open innovation across Europe. Our cluster specialises in helping demanders of innovation to identify and polish their unmet needs; connecting them with potential suppliers, and then support their co-creation of new solutions (especially those needs come from the Healthcare sector).
Something that differentiates us is our emphasis on the adoption of successful innovations. We are committed to maximising the chances that those innovative solutions that work get deployed. We call this impactful innovation.
Instituto de Fomento de la Región de Murcia (INFO) is the Regional Development Agency of Murcia. It fosters economic growth by supporting innovation and internationalization of enterprises and has been managing EU funds since 1990. In particular, it manages the ERDF programme for the region (170M€ in 2021-27), which includes leading the development of Murcia’s RIS3 and its update for the 2021-27 period (“RIS4”).
Relevant Regional Stakeholders
During the first six months of PREPARE, forty-two public bodies based in the Region of Murcia were identified as regularly publishing their public procurement tenders on the public administration tender portals of the Murcia region public administration of the national public procurement webpage.
Actions Foreseen
As part of the Action plan of PREPARE project, Instituto de Fomento is to collaborate with regional public bodies that are willing to improve their knowledge about InnPr with a view to launching innovation tenders aimed to purchase and adopt innovative solutions to specific challenges in the Murcia region.
It is worth highlighting the creation of the new InnPr Unit at Instituto de Fomento to dynamise the role of the regional business sector in and collaborate with the public administration responsible for the regional strategy of innovative+green+social public procurement. The InnPr Unit has two areas of action. The first is ‘Open Innovation’, which seeks to bring the benefits of purchasing innovative solutions to companies in Murcia’s region. The second aims to increase collaboration and coordination with other government departments or public entities, such as universities, to promote an innovative and social regional strategy.
