It’s frustrating to write a solicitation when you feel like you’re in the dark on the subject matter, but government employees sometimes fear that collaborating with prospective vendors or outside stakeholders crosses over a legal line and creates an unfair advantage. However, communicating with vendors in a fair and open way before a formal solicitation has been released can be an important component of your market research. In this training, governments learned about the spectrum of market research, from simple internet research to Requests for Information to prototype competitions. They also saw examples of what effective market research looks like from real governments.
