Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) demands that public buyers navigate a complex landscape where law, technology, and project management all collide. But do public administrations actually know what skills they need to keep up? This insight from the Procure Innovation EU training programme breaks down the key competencies that make the difference between an innovation procurement process that delivers and one that drowns in bureaucracy, from knowing which legal procedures open the door to creative solutions, to reading the market, spotting high-potential startups, and leading cross-departmental teams over multi-year cycles. Because in the end, public innovation doesn't depend on frameworks alone, it depends on the people who put them into practice.