There is a common assumption in collaborative research and innovation funding that bringing together organisations with a big brand image or complementary expertise is the foundation of a strong proposal.
It is a reasonable starting point. But it is not enough.
Over the years, I have worked with partnerships involving universities, SMEs, multinational companies, public bodies and research organisations, sometimes across several countries. Some have developed into highly successful collaborations. Others have struggled before the first substantive section of the application has been written.
And often, the problem has very little to do with the quality of the research or innovation.
It is about the partnership itself.
A funding opportunity is not a shared strategy
One of the most common mistakes is to build a consortium around an available funding call rather than a genuinely shared objective.
An organisation identifies an opportunity. It approaches potential partners, often with considerable enthusiasm, and invites them to participate. Everyone agrees that the subject is interesting. There may be productive conversations, promising ideas and an initial division of responsibilities.
But have the partners actually established why they want to work together?
For the university, the priority might be new research, publications and doctoral opportunities.
For the SME, it might be product development, access to facilities or a route towards commercialisation.
For an industrial partner, it could be supply chain development, technical validation or access to intellectual property.
None of these objectives is inherently incompatible. The difficulty arises when the differences remain unspoken, particularly when each organisation assumes that the others share its priorities.
A strong partnership does not require identical motivations. It requires a shared understanding of what the collaboration is intended to achieve and how each partner benefits.
Collaboration or simply waiting for the rewards?
One of the more frustrating experiences in collaborative research is working with commercial partners who are enthusiastic about being associated with a project but considerably less enthusiastic about contributing to its development. They attend the occasional review meeting. They express interest in the findings. They may provide helpful comments when asked. But securing meaningful engagement, access to expertise or practical support can be surprisingly difficult.
Then something changes.
The research begins to produce commercially interesting results. A technology demonstrates potential. An opportunity for exploitation becomes apparent.
Suddenly, the organisation that had been largely absent from the development process becomes very interested indeed, particularly in questions of ownership, intellectual property and commercial rights.
I have experienced this situation personally, and it raises an important question.
Is the organisation participating in a collaboration, or simply positioning itself to benefit if somebody else’s work produces something valuable?
There is nothing wrong with commercial organisations wanting a return on their involvement. Indeed, commercial exploitation is often an important objective of publicly funded research and innovation. But there needs to be a reasonable relationship between contribution, risk, responsibility and reward.
A partner that contributes very little to the development process but expects substantial rights to the resulting innovation can create significant difficulties for the organisations that have invested their time, expertise and resources.
This is why early discussions about expectations, intellectual property and exploitation are so important. It is also why the selection of partners deserves considerably more scrutiny than simply asking whether an organisation has a recognisable name or an impressive reputation.
Be very careful whom you invite into the partnership, and understand what they expect to take away from it.
The extraordinary value of the right commercial partner
Of course, the opposite can also be true. Some of the most valuable contributions to collaborative research come from commercial organisations that recognise the wider potential of the project and are prepared to invest in making it successful. Their contribution may go well beyond their formal work package or financial commitment. They may provide access to specialist facilities, equipment, testing environments or technical expertise that would otherwise be difficult or expensive to obtain. They might make meeting spaces available, introduce researchers to customers or suppliers, help identify practical barriers to implementation or bring an entirely different perspective to the proposed innovation. Sometimes it is the informal contribution that makes the greatest difference.
An experienced engineer asking a difficult question.
A commercial director challenging an assumption about the market.
A manufacturing specialist identifying an alternative approach that the research team had not considered.
These contributions can change the direction of a project for the better.
The distinction is not between academic and commercial partners, or between large and small organisations. It is between those who genuinely engage with the collaboration and those who regard participation as an opportunity to observe developments from a comfortable distance.
We have forgotten the value of getting people into a room
One of the changes I have noticed since the pandemic is how readily we default to video meetings.
There are obvious advantages. They reduce travel, save money and make it much easier to involve people working in different organisations and countries. For routine project management and progress reporting, they can be extremely effective. But I am not convinced that they are always the best way to establish a new collaboration.
There is something fundamentally different about bringing people together in a room, particularly when they are being asked to explore an idea that has not yet been fully defined.
I have facilitated workshops where participants arrived uncertain about why they had been invited or what they could contribute. A few hours later, those same individuals were actively developing ideas, identifying opportunities and recognising connections between their expertise and that of other participants.
I have also seen the opposite.
Organisations initially considered essential to a proposed collaboration have attended a workshop and, through the discussion, recognised that their priorities or capabilities did not align sufficiently with the emerging project.
They did not continue into the final consortium.
And that was a useful outcome.
A successful partnership workshop does not necessarily end with everyone agreeing to participate. It ends with a better understanding of what the project needs and who is best placed to deliver it.
Why facilitation matters
Simply bringing people together is not enough.
Without structure, workshops can become dominated by the most confident voices, established relationships or the organisation that originated the idea. Others may contribute very little, particularly when they are unfamiliar with the subject or uncertain about their role.
Effective facilitation creates an environment in which different perspectives can be explored, assumptions challenged and ideas developed collectively. The aim is not to force agreement. It is to establish whether there is a credible basis for collaboration and, if so, what that collaboration might look like.
In workshops I have facilitated, some of the most valuable discussions have emerged when participants have been encouraged to look beyond their immediate professional or organisational interests.
What problem are we actually trying to solve?
Who needs the proposed solution?
What capabilities do we already have in the room?
What are we missing?
Where might different approaches complement one another?
And what could we achieve together that none of us could realistically achieve alone?
These conversations can reveal opportunities that were not apparent when the original funding idea was conceived. They can also expose fundamental differences that would otherwise remain hidden until much later.
Both outcomes have value.
The workshop before the work packages
I would argue that many collaborative funding proposals would benefit from a structured partnership development workshop before the detailed work packages and budgets are prepared.
Not necessarily a large event or an expensive exercise.
Sometimes a carefully planned half-day session with the right people can establish more than several weeks of individual video calls and email exchanges.
The workshop should give participants an opportunity to explore five fundamental questions:
- What are we trying to achieve? Establish the problem, the proposed innovation and the outcomes that would make the project worthwhile.
- Why do we need to collaborate? Identify the capabilities, resources and perspectives required, and consider whether the proposed partners are genuinely complementary.
- What does each organisation want from the project? Explore research, commercial, strategic and organisational motivations, including potential differences in expectations.
- What is each partner prepared to contribute? Consider expertise, staff time, facilities, finance, networks and the responsibilities that participation would entail.
- What might prevent us from working successfully together? Discuss potential conflicts, intellectual property expectations, decision-making arrangements and the practical challenges of delivery.
The answers provide a much stronger foundation for designing the project, allocating responsibilities and developing a credible funding application. They also help establish relationships between the individuals who will ultimately be expected to work together.
That human dimension should not be underestimated.
Sometimes the best decision is not to collaborate
Not every promising conversation should result in a joint application.
Sometimes the timing is wrong.
Sometimes the organisations are at different stages of development.
Sometimes commercial expectations cannot be reconciled.
And sometimes a proposed partner adds complexity without contributing sufficient value.
There can be considerable pressure to continue, particularly when a funding deadline is approaching and time has already been invested. But withdrawing from an unsuitable partnership is not necessarily a failure. It may be the most sensible strategic decision available. The important thing is to recognise the problem before organisations become committed to delivering something they have not properly agreed.
Equally, it is worth remaining open to unexpected contributions. The organisation that initially appears peripheral to the discussion may turn out to offer exactly the expertise, facilities or connections that the project needs.
That is one of the reasons I value facilitated workshops. They allow partnerships to develop through genuine discussion rather than through a series of assumptions about who should be involved.
Build the partnership before building the proposal
In Part 6, I discussed why SMEs and spin-outs need to think beyond the next grant and develop a funding strategy that supports their longer-term ambitions. The same principle applies to partnerships. A consortium should not exist simply because a funding opportunity requires collaboration. It should bring together organisations that can achieve something worthwhile by working together, with a clear understanding of their respective interests, contributions and responsibilities.
And that understanding rarely emerges from circulating a draft proposal and asking people to comment. It develops through conversation, challenge, negotiation and the willingness to explore ideas that may be very different from those originally envisaged.
At Tytherleigh Consulting, I support organisations with funding strategy, consortium development, proposal preparation, contract negotiation and the management of funded projects. An important part of that work is helping organisations establish the right partnerships before they commit significant time and resources to an application.
I also offer facilitated partnership development workshops, bringing potential collaborators together to explore project opportunities, identify the expertise and resources required, examine expectations and establish whether there is a sound basis for working together.
Having worked across the full lifecycle of complex research and innovation projects, I know how decisions made during the earliest conversations can influence what happens years later.
A successful funding proposal is important.
But a partnership that can actually deliver what it promises is considerably more valuable.
Before asking whether your consortium can win the funding, ask whether you have assembled a group of organisations that genuinely want to work together.
If you are considering a collaborative funding application and would like support with developing the partnership, including planning and facilitating an initial workshop, please get in touch.