Tendering and contracting of new, emerging technologies

Abstract

This paper describes a practical model and procedure on how to tender products based on new, emerging technologies. This situation prevails in large-scale scientific projects and in other, mostly publicly funded, efforts to construct systems of significant technological scale. The paper proposes a double-blind communication and tendering procedure for establishing the means, partners and economic framework for the projects that finally commit to accomplish the task. This procedure sets a dedicated technological broker in to central position of the information exchange between the buyer and supplier. The presented procedure reduces any political interference, ensures more accurate cost estimates and helps the project to obtain better financial basis to kick-off. When in operation, the procedure can be used for determining the costs and most prominent technological trajectories for a proposed solution. The approach presented paves the ground towards the emergence of virtual markets for products yet-to-be-engineered.