The Living Lab MED on Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) was launched on October 17^th, 2023, in a hybrid session, which took place online and in person in House of the Science in Valencia (Spain). The aim of this event was to create a first-of-a-kind cross-border Living Lab on Public Procurement of Innovation, to share best practices among participant countries, and to promote the collaboration between Mediterranean countries in Public Procurement of Innovation. All the member countries —Spain, Italy, Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt— were represented not only by the project members but also by public buyers, national research centres (NRC) and technology development organizations.

The Living Lab MED is a direct consequence of the work done by each partner in their National Living Lab on PPI, because there it was where the public procurers presented their needs, where the NRCs searched for technologies or capabilities to be a solution for those needs, and the private sector raised interest in developing said technologies. Now it was the time to find cross-border solutions for the identified needs that have not yet found a technological solution within the country. The partners also used the event to present other technologies that have the potential to solve present and future public administration’s needs in Mediterranean countries.

The event was structured in three blocks. In the first one the objectives of the Living Lab MED and the methodology applied for the pre-competitive analysis for the pre-matching were explained to all participants. The second one was the core of the event, in which there was the discussion between the public buyers and the technologies owners about the public needs and the provided. To wrap up the event, the project manager of the Lead Beneficiary presented the conclusions and next steps.

The event was a complete success, on the one hand, the number and relevance of the participants made it possible to find a match between the technologies and the needs of these public buyers, and on the other hand, the attendees were able to identify cross-border contacts for future opportunities, given that the conversations held between them went beyond the initial technologies and needs discussed.

The results of the meeting confirm that the Living Lab MED has fulfilled its objectives by promoting collaboration between Mediterranean countries on PPI; identifying three pre-opportunities with cross-border impact; and enabling discussions for further collaboration between public administrations and national research centres to develop a PPI pilot with the PPI4MED model.