Improving Horizon 2020 efficiency: the importance of the consortium

Problems with large consortia

Once a project has been started, there is one factor that decides whether or not a project will yield results: the number of partners within a consortium. The European Commission often asks for a multi actor approach: a collaboration of all players within a value chain. This is the case especially when new industrial or societal standards are being pursued. However, if very large consortia are not restricted by proper project management, they run the risk of become inefficient or even ineffective. This is many a project’s downfall.

Limit the number of participants in a Horizon 2020 consortium

Our advice is to limit the number of key partners involved in a project. This can be done by subcontracting non-essential necessary organisations. Subcontracting is often seen as undesirable. However, in a number of projects that we developed and managed, we saw that subcontracting actually improved the implementation of the project. That is the case especially when part of the work concerns realising demos or pilots on a large scale (like engineering, or contract research for the actual holder of the intellectual property).

What is the ideal consortium in a Horizon 2020 project?

The ideal partnership strongly depends on the type of project. But smaller consortia in general work better, more efficiently and more effectively. In our experience, partners with smaller, less essential budgets are often less committed to a project, and this makes them less effective. It is worth seriously considering how you can keep your consortium as small as possible, to guarantee your project’s success.