Working together is essential for scientific progress, and organising a consortium properly is crucial for achieving your project’s goals.
This process requires time, effort and good planning, and it can seem daunting sometimes. So here are some tips to help you build a strong consortium.
Tips for building a strong consortium
- Think about your goal
Choose partners that can help you reach it.
- Start looking for partners early
The process of building a strong consortium can take long. One approach is to first assemble a core team and then expand the consortium around it.
- Use the European Commission’s free tools to find partners
Funding & tenders portal- great to find partners for your project; you can search by topic, type of organisation, or location.
Horizon Europe NCP portal - this network provides guidance on all aspects of participation in Horizon Europe, including partnerships.
Enterprise Europe Network - it’s the world's largest support network for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with international ambitions and has a partnering tool, where potential partners can be searched by type of profile, country, sector, and more.
EURAXESS Partnering Portal – Register your institution so that others can find you
RADIANCE, former MSCA-NET(Only for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions projects) - in this platform you’ll be able to find fellows, companies, supervisors and academic institutions.
- Build on efforts from previous projects
Contact their consortia members via resources such as the Cordis website, Funding & tenders portal-or even LinkedIn.
- Create a strong framework for project management
Let the researchers focus on their science and find a good management partner/person that has a helicopter view of the whole project.
- Balance is important
Geographical distribution of partners, gender equality, and diversity in topics is crucial. Bringing together partners from various disciplines can significantly enhance the co-creation of better solutions.
- Avoid redundancy
Each partner should have a unique role.
Up your networking game
- Consider getting industry or other non-academic partners (if applicable to your project)
The inclusion of ‘Innovators’ in a project consortium can act as a predictor for innovation generation, such as registered patents.
- Networking can be crucial
The 118 most innovative projects analysed in this study on the Horizon 2020 MSCA Innovative Training Networks scheme presented the results in many events and conferences.
Attend events with brokerage/matchmaking sessions such as at the Horizon Europe info days. Follow us on LinkedIn to get news about all these events.
- Seek assistance when needed
If you feel a bit lost and need some extra help, contact your National contact point (NCP) and Research Enquiry service
- Once the consortium is set up, agree on ways of working
An early and clear definition of roles and responsibilities can prove very useful for the whole duration of the project.
Success stories: building strong consortia for more innovative output
- BIOTRAFO: Pioneering green innovation through industry-science synergy
When industry and science collaborate, results come hand in hand. By leveraging the resources from the industrial partners, the researchers of the BIOTRAFO project successfully developed and tested the impact of biodegradable oils in cooling power transformers.
The multidisciplinary expertise within the consortium led to ground-breaking results, advancing an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels. They also secured a technical validation for other industrial stakeholders to implement it in their businesses.
- SEAFOODTOMORROW: Uniting 36 partners across Europe for safer and healthier seafood
Collaboration is the key to success – especially in extensive consortium projects. SEAFOODTOMORROW brought together 36 partners from 19 European countries to develop solutions to improve the safety and dietary properties of seafood. Such transdisciplinary approach supported by industry experts allows to tackle the issue from different angles, ensuring economic efficiency and environmental sustainability.
Working with partners across Europe helped SEAFOODTOMORROW develop methods that benefited the whole region and connect with different groups of producers, regulatory bodies, retailers and consumers.