Applying for a Horizon Europe grant often means a solid consortium needs to be built to perform the foreseen work in the grant. Writing the proposal and setting out the workplan is an intensive process and can be difficult. We will discuss three common pitfalls we often see during this process, to spare you from making these mistakes!
1. Starting too late
Projects often do not come to life until the call text is published. However, it is often wise to form a consortium even before the call is published. Imagine having the perfect partner mix in theory, and finding all of them already taken… Moreover, if you have formed the consortium earlier, you are likely to have a more thought-through mission and vision, which in turn is more convincing to EU reviewers.
2. Missing strategy
While it is important to start timely with forming a consortium, it should be noted that just starting early is not enough for success. To be able to build a consortium, first a clear strategy needs to be developed. What do you want to achieve, who are the ideal partners, and what would they exactly bring to the project? Communication of this strategy is key, in order to align the goals and improve your chances of high engagement.
3. Establishing a purely theoretical collaboration
The collaboration within the consortium is a long-term and very intensive one. What our experts often see is that partnerships are formed on paper, but not followed up in practice.
Missing a common goal and lack of engagement of consortium partners is seen to create problems within the project. While you might have put together the perfect mix, there is no use if they do not really work together. Critical for success is creating a common goal, knowing who you are going to be working with will actually do the work, and to be able to trust all partners.
Horizon Europe Project Management
ttopstart’s Programme Leadership (project management) department has created models to strengthen the collaboration and to make sure all the partners are aligned. In this, we bring much more than standard ‘reporting and administration’. We can partner in your project as a full consortium member.
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ttopstart offers extensive experience in building winning research consortia, especially for competitive Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe projects.
We can empower you to identify, contact and bring together consortium members for a strong collaboration. We can help you find and convince key partners, leveraging our broad network in life sciences and medical technology. We can also help you create a competitive project and write the grant proposal with our proven FFWD method for winning grant proposals.
Contact us today to find out what we can do for you.