Driving sustainable innovation through procurement of complex products and systems in construction

This paper will explore how procurement of complex products and systems by the demand side may drive sustainable innovation in the construction business system. In recent years, (public) procurement of complex products and systems has increasingly been advocated as a complementary yet powerful strategy to drive innovation for sustainable construction. Such a demand-oriented innovation strategy has been pushed not only by national agencies, but also by international bodies like the United Nations and notably by the European Commission through its Lead Market Initiative. Based on an on-going case study of procuring a complex construction project, this paper emphasize the complex and emergent character of the demand side in construction and argues for a stronger analytical sensitivity towards the various actors and activities on the demand side of construction. Further, this paper makes a preliminary investigation of the various types of constituents of construction. In particular, this paper argues for a distinction between building owners and users in an analytical model of innovation in complex products and systems like construction. Finally, this paper argues that procurement of complex products and systems may reshape the linkages between the various constituents of construction through policy processes, business processes, and learning processes, and the paper hypothesises on the dominant character of these linkages.