Priya Mukherjee
Title: PUBLIC PROCUREMENT AS A TOOL TO BOOST INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP: CASE OF INDIAN DEFENSE SECTOR
Supervisor: Dr. Veiko Lember, MA
Opponent: Dr. Aleksandrs Cepilovs, MA
Defense: 2-3 June 2022
Abstract: Public procurement of innovation has emerged as a policy tool that can be utilized in order to boost innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities. The thesis is about public procurement of innovation in India and how it has played a role in providing an impetus to the innovation ecosystem and encouraging entrepreneurship. A special focus is on the defense sector to see how it has adapted public procurement of innovation by designing special initiatives that bring to light various scenarios and challenges which can be solved by innovative solutions and products. As there is a lack of feedback mechanism for the overall structure and schemes, the research for this thesis provides a starting point. The analysis is conducted using the system failures framework for innovation policy design to see how public procurement initiatives in India play a role in overcoming these failures; along with a questionnaire based study to gauge the overall effectiveness of the initiatives and collect feedback. The findings show that public procurement of innovation initiatives in India are heavily focused on innovation and entrepreneurship and have a potential to be devised as a holistic innovation policy tool. These can be made more robust by taking into account the issues being faced by the end-users (entrepreneurs in this case) and by working on making a more inclusive policy for public procurement.
Keywords: Public procurement; innovation; entrepreneurship; defense procurement
