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How to create a good consortium Erik van de Burgwal SenterNovem is een agentschap van Ministerie van Economische Zaken 1 Content I. Initial phase consortium building II. Critical mass and excellence of a consortium III. Characteristics of an international EU-project team • Effective and successful teams • ‘Good but not excellent’ – analysis of evaluation data Initial phase consortium building FP7-consortium budget too high too many partners Team A Team B Team C critical mass? excellence ? overlap no SME, few CEC Keep in mind while searching for partners EU-policy background • SME-target (15% of the budget) • Participation of candidate countries politically wanted • Third country participation encouraged • Take account of relevant aspects of other EU and national policies IPR issues • Collaborating with competitors? • What could be determined in a consortium agreement? What does SME need to know about FP7 • FP7 is about international cooperation • Only topics for EU-wide interest • Only state-of-the-art projects • EU wants SMEs in projects (15% target) • 25% success rate • Long time horizon • Administrative procedures Critical mass and excellence of a consortium • What is meant by critical mass? • How to make a consortium excellent? • How to deal with excellence in the preparation phase? Critical mass number of participants third country participation policy needs Partnership tens of millions EUR project: “deliver its objectives” Duration Resources available budget How to make a consortium excellent? “Are you and your partners Europe’s (or even the world’s) best in your respective field?” Group of excellent researchers excellent consortium? “If you can’t beat them join them” Alliances in advance healthy competition How to deal with excellence in the preparation phase? “Envisaged co-ordinators will be ‘popular’ persons.” “If you don’t talk about excellence, evaluators will!” “Are you ready for disappointing well known colleagues?” Successful project participation damaged relationships Characteristics of an international EU- project team • Multinational and multicultural (e.g. different management styles) • Different backgrounds (academic, enterprise, civil servants e.g. of EC) • European project = extra work on top of normal workload • Long-lasting collaboration including special relationship with the EC • Generally equal rights but different contractual obligations in the contract • Partners have varying project targets • Shared ownership of project results • Rare but intensive meetings Effective and successful teams • Have clear and common goals • Share the responsibility for those goals and measure the progress towards them • Have the necessary blend of skills and roles (technical, interpersonal and problem solving) • Get support from the superiors (time and money) • Have allocated appropriate roles and tasks to each member • Have developed and agreed on practices and procedures to get things done • Handle conflicts constructively and openly • Use time to know each other and to understand cultural diversity • Reflect frequently their working style ‘Good but not excellent’ – analysis of evaluation data • Summary of evaluation summaries of reserve list projects on criteria ‘Quality of the consortium’ Evaluation remarks (1) • ‘it would have been good to see greater SME involvement’ • ‘a greater end-user involvement is desirable’ • ‘consortium strong but contains too much overlap between some partners’ • ‘consortium rather unbalanced and should be extended with equipment suppliers’ • ‘one-nation consortium with bits added to make it European’ • ‘the project could benefit from the presence of more industrial experience’ Evaluation remarks (2) • ‘insufficient representation of SMEs and consumers groups’ • ‘information about individual persons and their scientific quality’ • ‘consortium is dominated by academic teams’ • ‘the workload distribution is unbalanced and the budget for some investigators seems overestimated’ • ‘specialisation seems too high in some instances’ • ‘The total number of participants might be reduced’ Partnersearch & partner profile Erik van de Burgwal SenterNovem is een agentschap van Ministerie van Economische Zaken 15 Features of typical successful SME • • • • Higher educated staff (substantial part of workforce) Export >10% Already has contacts with foreign companies and/or RTD performers Sound bookkeeping • Ambitious! Who does the SME need to know • European Technology Platforms • Local participants – Very often a source of new projects! • (networks of) RTD-performers and Universities • Local branch organisations • Successful local partners in FP6 projects • The local NCP Sources of information • • • • • • • Own network (visits!) Internal network – National/Regional Contact Points CORDIS (www.cordis.europa.eu) – Partner search database – Database of ongoing FP6 projects Websites of projects and organisations Websites of European Technology Platforms http://cordis.europa.eu/technology-platforms/home_en.html Brokerage events Semi-scientific journals and magazines Cordis European Technology Platforms ETP ERTRAC SME support projects • TranSMEs – Cooperation between Bulgary, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Turkey www.transmes.net • EuroTrans – Cooperation between Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Poland www.euro-trans.info – 2007/2008 EuroTrans-Days Partnerprofile • • • • • • Description of company R&D capabilities Field of excellence Describe EU network Experience in international cooperation Website (up to date, in English) • Disseminate through Cordis, NCP network Thank you. NCP Surface Transport: Erik van de Burgwal [email protected] SenterNovem EG-Liaison The Hague, The Netherlands + 31 – 70 – 373 52 50 www.egl.nl