PCP Academy
I work on how public authorities can use their spending power
to solve problems that the market alone will not solve.
I have spent over two decades working at the intersection of public policy, regulatory frameworks, and market innovation — not as an observer, but as someone who stays until the problem is solved.
My work is not consulting in the conventional sense. I engage with challenges that I believe are worth engaging with: structurally significant, legally complex, and genuinely useful for citizens. I carry part of the weight until concrete results are achieved.
My focus is the demand side of innovation. For most of my career this has meant working on how public authorities can use their purchasing power to stimulate new technologies, open competitive markets, and avoid the lock-in and duplication that traditional incentive instruments produce.
I work primarily with public institutions — governments, regions, European bodies, innovation agencies. I also work with companies that innovate and need to navigate the public procurement ecosystem as a market entry strategy.
I teach. I write. I engage in public debate when the policy frameworks are incorrect and the stakes are high enough to justify it.
Innovation procurement is often reduced to pre-commercial procurement. The actual field is broader: it encompasses demand-side policy design, instrument selection, competitive market creation, technology uptake, and the governance of public investment across the full innovation cycle.
The question is never which instrument? — it is where does the public authority’s comparative advantage actually lie, and what kind of intervention produces durable change rather than isolated projects.
Principles, not statements
Innovation policy generates more declarations than results. Every project must be designed to move from strategy to implementation to measurable impact — and must be evaluated on that basis alone.
PCP Academy accepts assignments only when the challenge is structurally significant and the proposed intervention is genuinely capable of generating public value. Public resources must be directed at what truly matters.
Analysis and recommendations are free from institutional agendas and market interests. The only objective is policy that works — legally, economically, and operationally. This sometimes means saying that a policy is wrong.
Several engagements have consisted primarily in correcting frameworks that were incorrectly designed — particularly the persistent confusion between funding instruments and procurement instruments, which carries real legal and competitive consequences.
Delivery does not end with a report. PCP Academy stays through implementation, troubleshoots what goes wrong, and measures whether the policy objective was actually met. Results, not recommendations, are the deliverable.
Innovation procurement is worth doing only if it opens markets to new solutions, removes barriers to innovation, and generates tangible benefit for citizens and institutions. Recognition matters only as evidence of that.
Before the answers, the right questions
Between 2004 and 2006, when European policy on innovation procurement was still being written, these questions were posed — to the European Commission, to public authorities beginning to experiment with demand-side instruments, and to the institutions that would eventually have to implement what the policy prescribed. They were not rhetorical. They required answers. Some of those answers took the form of legal frameworks, governance models, and operational guidelines. Others became programmes, evaluations, and procurement procedures. The questions remain the foundation of the work carried out today.
A record — partial — of the work
The following is a selection of engagements. It is not exhaustive.
Start of professional practice in institutional advisory for the public sector. First structured analysis of demand-side innovation instruments and the limits of traditional grant-based incentive models.
Design of an early regional pre-commercial procurement framework for Valle d’Aosta Region, integrating demand-side innovation instruments with regional development strategies. Energy efficiency domain. Engagement with the European Commission on foundational questions of demand-side policy.
Design of the first regional PCP governance model in Italy. The framework was subsequently recognised by the European Commission as a best practice in innovation procurement policy implementation.
Strategic, legal and technical advice to the Italian Government (Department for Digitalisation and Technological Innovation) for introducing PCP into national research and innovation policy. Definition of the Italian PCP framework, operational guidelines, and contextualisation within ICT-specific regulations.
Contribution to legislative acts integrating innovation procurement within Decreto Legge “Crescita 2.0”. Publication of the first comprehensive Italian PCP operational guidelines — Gli appalti pre-commerciali: istruzioni per l’uso — within the Digital Agenda Italia framework.
Expert support to MIUR–MISE for the design and implementation of a large-scale national PCP initiative. Independent evaluation of more than 190 innovation challenges submitted by public administrations across Italy under the national call (DD 437/2013), within a programme initially funded by €150M (€50M MISE + €100M MIUR). Total public innovation investment designed or supported by PCP Academy across national, regional, and European programmes through 2024 exceeds €250M.
Legal and strategic advisory to Lombardy Region for integrating PCP and PPI instruments within EU Structural Funds co-funded Regional Operational Programmes, coherent with Smart Specialisation. First regional PCP in the healthcare sector financed on ordinary regional funds in Italy.
Legal and policy advisory to the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center (Poland) and the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic for contextualising PCP within national R&D and innovation regulatory frameworks, aligned with EU State Aid and R&D&I rules.
Contribution to major European Commission studies: Strategic Use of Innovation Procurement (SMART 2016/0040, with PwC) and Quantifying the Impact of PCP in the ICT Sector (SMART 2014/0009, co-authored with Bocconi University and Proxenter). These studies helped establish European monitoring frameworks for innovation procurement policy.
Co-design and implementation of the P2I (Procure to Innovate) network, supporting the creation of National Competence Centres for Innovation Procurement across Europe. National action plans, sectoral strategies, and funding synergies. Appointed by BME to support the network Secretariat.
Strategic and legal support to Sardinia Region / Sardegna Ricerche for the design and implementation of a regional innovation procurement action plan integrated within Structural Funds programmes and Smart Specialisation strategies. This initiative received the European Innovation Procurement Award (2024). Prize POSIDON: strategic procurement with step-change impact in the environmental decontamination sector.
Two consecutive recognitions awarded at the Innovation Procurement Conference 2024, organised by the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU in collaboration with the European Commission and the European Innovation Council.
Assignment from the Directorate General for Research & Innovation to analyse the challenges, effectiveness and impacts of EU-funded PCPs and PPIs, to improve the design and roll-out of instruments in the next Framework Programme for R&I.
The scope of the work
Instruments must be chosen with precision for each context. The first question is never which procurement instrument — it is whether procurement is the right instrument at all, where the public authority’s comparative advantage lies in the innovation chain, and which regulatory framework governs the intervention.
Evidence that shapes policy
A selection of research contributions, policy studies and publications that have informed the European debate on innovation procurement.
Comparative analysis of national innovation procurement policy frameworks across EU Member States. Benchmarks policy adoption, proposes monitoring methodologies, and integrates results into European scoreboards (DESI, EDPR).
In AA.VV. (PwC) — European Commission Study SMART 2016/0040One of the first empirical assessments of the economic and technological impacts of PCP programmes. Covers methodology design, survey instruments, selection criteria, interviews with procurers and suppliers, and dataset analysis tools.
Bedin S., DeCarolis F. (Bocconi University), Iossa E. (Proxenter) — ISBN 978-92-79-51772-3Policy contribution addressing the role of public procurement of research services, with focus on market access for new entrants and the design of competitive conditions in publicly-funded R&D contracts.
European Commission — State Aid R&D&I Framework 2014The first comprehensive operational guidelines for the introduction and implementation of pre-commercial procurement within the Italian public administration system.
Digital Agenda Italia — Pre-print versionStudy commissioned by DG Research & Innovation examining the effectiveness, challenges and long-term impacts of EU-funded PCP and PPI initiatives. Literature review, data analysis, stakeholder interviews, case studies, and SME participation framework.
European Commission — DG R&I, ongoingAward
2024
European Innovation Procurement Awards
The awards celebrate outstanding practices that leverage procurement to stimulate innovation and address major societal challenges across the European Union. The ceremony took place at the Innovation Procurement Conference 2024, hosted by the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU in collaboration with the European Commission and the European Innovation Council.
Recognition is not an objective. It is what happens when rigorous, independent work — done over many years, on the right problems — eventually produces results that others find worth noting.
Education as a responsibility
Teaching is not a secondary activity. It is where the work becomes durable — where the capacity to think strategically about public demand is built into the next generation of practitioners, officials, and decision-makers.
University and institutional programmes
Teaching innovation procurement — its legal, economic and strategic dimensions — to public officials, senior civil servants, procurement practitioners and graduate students. Programmes include:
- Specialised courses at University of Turin with ANAC — innovation procurement law and practice
- Bocconi University CERGAS — health procurement and innovation
- Inter-institutional European academy programmes (INSPIRE, HOOP, LEA projects)
- Training programmes for senior public managers on procurement strategy, State Aid, IPR
- Coaching and change management for public administrations implementing new instruments
Young people — a different kind of engagement
The work with younger students — in financial literacy, law and economics, and international relations — is driven by a different motivation: the belief that proximity to complex real-world problems, early in an educational journey, changes how people think about institutions and about their own capacity to act within them.
The objective here is not to transmit content. It is to prepare students to ask the right questions — and to understand why those questions are hard.
- Qualified to teach law, economics, and international relations (Italian state certification)
- Financial literacy programmes for secondary school students
- Design of practical and experiential training interventions
- Public communication — institutional events, conference facilitation
A partial record of collaborations
- European Commission — DG Research & Innovation
- European Commission — DG CONNECT
- European Commission — DG REGIO
- European Innovation Council
- Italian Government — Dept. for Digitalisation and Technological Innovation
- Italian Ministry for Universities and Research (MIUR)
- Italian Ministry of Economic Development (MISE)
- Lombardy Region
- Sardinia Region / Sardegna Ricerche
- Valle d’Aosta Region
- BME — German Association for Supply Chain Management
- Procure2Innovate (P2I) European network
- Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center
- Technology Agency of the Czech Republic
- University of Turin — ANAC
- Bocconi University — CERGAS
Where the work has been applied
PCP Academy has operated across a wide range of public service domains. The common thread is not the sector — it is the presence of a significant societal challenge that public demand, if correctly structured, can help solve.
Assistive technologies, hospital-acquired infection diagnostics, HEMS emergency services, pre-operative stress reduction, chronic disease monitoring.
E-government services, digital platforms for citizens and businesses, cloud computing for PA, e-procurement systems, smart metering.
Soil decontamination (BRODISE, POSIDON projects — step-change in the sector), circular bioeconomy, waste management, environmental monitoring.
Renewable energy R&D, building energy efficiency, wave energy conversion technologies, smart grids and sustainable infrastructure.
Urban organic waste recovery, wastewater valorisation, industrial symbiosis, circular public procurement frameworks.
Energy-efficient public buildings, Mediterranean building renovation, green procurement standards for public infrastructure.
Personalised learning platforms for primary and secondary schools (LEA, IMAILE projects), mathematics and STEM innovation, edtech procurement frameworks.
Smart water metering (SMART.MET), lagoon and aquatic ecosystem management, integrated water resource governance, utility innovation procurement.
I work on problems worth solving — not on all problems.
If you are working on a structurally significant challenge in innovation procurement, public demand policy, or the design of programmes that connect public institutions to emerging technologies — a conversation is the right place to start.
Get in touch