How to build a successful consortium

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Horizon Europe Office in Ukraine receives many requests asking how to choose reliable partners, build the best team and create a strong consortium for a successful application to participate in Horizon Europe calls. Working together is essential for scientific progress, and organising a consortium properly is crucial for achieving your project’s goals. To help potential applicants of the Programme find the best partners, we are publishing advice from the experts of the European Research Executive Agency (REA).

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. 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.

More tips and useful information are here.