RefBan

Referral Banners

Yashi

Thursday, January 27, 2011

An American Take on the British Debate Over Public Procurement as a Stimulus to Private Sector Competition and Innovation



View of the House of Lords Chamber in the Pala...Image via Wikipedia





Very interesting stuff coming out of the United Kingdom! Thanks to our friends at the Contracting Intelligence Blog, we have learned of a very interesting development springing out of the British Parliament these days over how governmental procurement can stimulate innovation and small business competitiveness through open and fair acquisition processes. The House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee has been looking into the broad question: Can public procurement be used as a tool to stimulate innovation? The committee is specifically addressing four areas of concern:







  1. The role of public procurement as a tool for stimulating commercially valuable innovation within industry


  2. The success or failure of current public procurement processes, mechanisms and tools in stimulating innovation within industry

  3. Potential mechanisms and processes for stimulating innovation in industry through public procurement, and any relevant comparisons overseas

  4. The impact of departmental and other government structures, processes and cultures on the use of procurement as an innovation tool, and cross-government and departmental efforts to co-ordinate and reconcile conflicts between policy objectives.




For background, you can read the full Contracting Intelligence Blog article recently posted on the matter:




House of Lords tackle the question; Can public procurement be used as a tool to stimulate innovation? « Contracting Intelligence Blog




You can also view the House of Lords Committee hearing on the matter, which featured testimony from Colin Cram, Andrew Wolstenholme, and Alan Powderham speaking to Lord Krebs and the other committee members:






A very interesting policy debate, and one that bears watching not just in the UK, but in the U.S. as well. As we have chronicled in our work here at the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://ping.fm/rY8PB), we have seen that at the federal, state and local level in America, reverse auctions help to "level the playing field" and create new opportunities for upstart firms and emerging competitors to gain governmental business, thereby finding revenue streams and profits that can help these small businesses grow into the future. As a policy matter, elected officials can cite hard evidence that reverse auctions produce not just cost and efficiency savings for government, but help stimulate private sector job and company growth by opening-up the sometimes cozy, cloistered world of public sector acquisition to new competitive forces. We hope that officials looking into using reverse auctions will consider this important, but constant, offshoot of using competitive bidding mechanisms, and as always, we're just an email or a phone call away if you need testimony and/or documentation to the positive effects of reverse auctions on small businesses.







David Wyld, Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University and Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://ping.fm/XFMZL)















Enhanced by Zemanta

A Look Inside the Ken Block Empire: Sports, Clothing, and Marketing to the Extreme







Great story from ABC's Nightline on Ken Block - one of the more innovative business leaders - and risk-takers - out there today.�Watch below and comment here on the blog:











And now you know what Gymkhana is (just don't go out and try that yourself)! Know any other corporate leader that can do that in a Ford Fiesta??

David Wyld, Professor of Management
Southeastern Louisiana University

Wyld About Business (http://ping.fm/iNzwc)




+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++






Enhanced by Zemanta

Speaking to Conservatives About Clean Energy: Neil Auerbach Writes in the Huffington Post






Great commentary that shows how we might very well be able to get bipartisan support for clean energy initiative­s. Auerbach shows that reverse auctions will be a key component of any solution going forward, introducin­g true competitio­n to make green and clean energy a reality through faster, better, cheaper solutions that will develop more quickly through the use of transparen­t, open competitio­n.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

David Wyld, Professor of Management
Southeaste­rn Louisiana University
Wyld About Business (http://wyl­d-business­.blogspot.­com/)



Enhanced by Zemanta

Lessons from the Past: Space Disasters Still Have Lessons to Teach



Space Shuttle Challenger ' s smoke plume after...Image via Wikipedia






Great article for all you students in business and management courses! Too often, we forget what happened last week, let alone several years or even decades ago. In this article, written by James Oberg, who is the space analyst for NBC News, the author speaks to the "lessons learned" from the two fatal Space Shuttle accidents and the Apollo 1 fire. Read below and comment here on the blog




Space disasters still have lessons to teach - Technology & science - Space - msnbc.com




And for you professor types - you know who you are - this would make an excellent piece for class and online discussion.




David Wyld, Professor of Management
Southeastern Louisiana University

Wyld About Business (http://ping.fm/rLfIO)






Enhanced by Zemanta

A Good, Chuckle-worthy Story: Teen Says He Put Grand Piano in Miami's Biscayne Bay to Help His Art School Application




U.S. Coast Guard





You gotta give this kid an "A" for effort. I think this - plus his Dad's connections - will definitely help in his art school application. Now, the Miami and Dade County authorities may think differently on this - read the complete story below:




Teen says he put grand piano in Miami bay - Yahoo! News

And watch ABC News coverage of it below:







David Wyld, Professor of Management
Southeastern Louisiana University



++++++++++++++++++++++



Enhanced by Zemanta

Yashi

Chitika