About the Municipal Innovation Exchange
The Municipal Innovation Exchange (MIX) was a joint effort led by the City of Guelph, in partnership with the City of London, City of Barrie, and MaRS. It explored the use of procurement as a tool to build innovation capacity and explore complex municipal challenges with partners and stakeholders, by conducting an innovation procurement challenge in each city.
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About the Municipal Innovation Exchange
MIX Challenge Toolkit
The MIX project team created this toolkit to assist municipalities — individual line managers, project owners or municipal strategic teams (such as a smart cities office) — that are contemplating or undertaking a procurement by means of innovation partnership. The toolkit can help municipal staff decide which projects are a good fit for this approach to procurement, as well as initiate and manage an innovation partnership. It can also help them assess their experience and determine if and how to apply future innovation partnerships.
All the contents were designed to support the common efforts of municipal and vendor partners to build, develop, and test products and services, so that ultimately, something of significant value is created for the partners, other municipalities, and most importantly, residents.
The toolkit does not need to be read in sequence and is not meant to be used as a step-by-step guide. Users can read each chapter sequentially, jump between sections based on interests, or look for information about a specific component of innovation partnership.
MIX Challenge Toolkit
MIX Challenge Tools
The Toolkit comprises 10 chapters, organized into five sections:
Section 1: Starting Innovation Partnership
- Chapter 1 – The MIX Challenge Framework
- Chapter 2 – Assessing Your Readiness for Innovation Partnership
- Chapter 3 – Telling people about the MIX Challenge
Section 2: The Challenge
- Chapter 4 – Identifying and Drafting a Challenge
- Chapter 5 – Early Market Engagement
Section 3: The Procurement
- Chapter 6 – Preparing and Posting the Procurement Opportunity
- Chapter 7 – Procurement is Open for Bidding
- Chapter 8 – Evaluating Vendor Proposals
Section 4: The Partnership
- Chapter 9 – Collaborating with a Partner
Section 5: Continuing Innovation Partnership
- Chapter 10 – Continuing to use the MIX Challenge Framework
MIX Challenge Tools
Case studies
These case studies examine how the cities of Guelph, London and Barrie each formed an innovation partnership with a vendor to develop a solution to a specific municipal challenge.