How to build a successful consortium

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.

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.

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