Commercial Innovation Hub

**Problem Statement**

Public sector procurement of innovation is fragmented and risk‑averse, with buyers struggling to engage markets and suppliers facing high barriers. A digital pre‑procurement environment is needed to enable early collaboration, testing, and clearer routes to scale innovative solutions to unmet public sector needs.

**Intention**

Public sector procurement of innovation is currently fragmented, risk‑averse, and misaligned to the needs of both buyers and suppliers;, limiting the ability to identify, test, and scale innovative solutions. Buyers struggle to engage the market early, run scalable pilots, and translate complex challenges into viable commercial pathways, while suppliers (particularly SMEs and start‑ups) face unclear demands, high barriers to entry, and limited routes from idea to contract.

Although there is an ambition to procure innovation, existing processes are not designed for experimentation or iterative learning. This results in missed opportunities and slow adoption of new technologies. There is therefore a need for a controlled, digital pre‑procurement environment that enables early collaboration, rapid testing, and evidence generation to de‑risk future procurements and create clearer pathways from problem identification to scalable delivery.

The Commercial Innovation Hub is seeking to develop a digital Innovation hub. An online networking environment to help public sector users and suppliers test problems, explore innovative solutions, collaborate with others and build a stronger evidence base before launching a formal procurement process.

The hub could include a series of modules such as sandbox areas, supplier directories, noticeboards, document repositories and chatrooms and must be able to evolve and grow as needs arise.

Within the hub the formal route to market, the Innovation Marketplace dynamic market will also be linked. The Hub is intended to provide a cross cutting one stop space where premarket conversation can take place and public sector buyers and suppliers can communicate freely, share problem solving ideas and build on those insights, to feed into formal market engagement and procurement activity. Its purpose is to encourage earlier collaboration, reduce barriers to innovation, and support more effective and commercially viable routes to future procurement and scaling.

What the Innovation Hub and Innovation Marketplace dynamic market will do:

The proposal is exploring a digital Innovation Hub that links to the Government Commercial Agency’s Innovation Marketplace architecture, creating a joined-up, demand-led entry point between public sector buyers with complex requirements and suppliers offering innovative solutions to public sector challenges.

The aim is to make engagement easier, clearer, and compliant with procurement rules.

What success would look like

Success would mean:

• More meaningful formal market engagement and broadens supplier participation.
• Allows users to test and refine real problems in the Hub areas before progressing to the Innovation Marketplace.
• Shows whether credible, commercially viable solutions already exist or could be developed.
• Supports supplier engagement that improves understanding of user needs, tests ideas, and shapes practical, deliverable solutions.
• Encourages participation from a broader and more diverse supplier base, including SMEs, without being too restrictive.
• Provides a usable and accessible process that enables buyers and suppliers to engage with the Hub effectively. Who the end users are

Likely users include:

• public sector buyers and commercial teams
• policy teams and other specialist functions
• SMEs, start-ups, and scale-ups
• larger suppliers or consortia working with smaller innovators

The pre-market engagement will inform and support the Commercial Innovation Hub team in identify (existing solutions, supplier build proposals, best practise, etc…), assess supplier capability, and explore how the digital Hub could support earlier engagement between public sector users and innovative suppliers. It will also help define the features, and engagement methods needed to make the digital Hub a practical tool for innovation-friendly procurement and for directing suppliers to the GCA Innovation Marketplace. *** This is early market engagement for a potential opportunity. The Department is not obligated to run a procurement following this activity and is not liable for any costs associated with participating in this early engagement. ***