Undertaking collaborative research

Coordinating collaborative research

Description

Undertaking collaborative research involves pooling expertise, resources, and data across organizations or disciplines to address complex problems more effectively than isolated efforts. This strategy enables shared access to knowledge, reduces duplication, and accelerates innovation by leveraging diverse perspectives. Its practical intent is to generate robust, actionable solutions to specific challenges, particularly those requiring interdisciplinary or cross-sectoral input, thereby overcoming limitations of individual capacity and fostering more comprehensive, sustainable outcomes.

Context

Collaborative projects where the partners share an equal sense of commitment are most likely to succeed. Fostering this commitment is therefore a priority when defining and managing the project. Teams with complementary and not necessarily overlapping skills are desirable. Each partner must both offer some added value to the partnership and feel that they are able to realise a commensurate share of the benefits.

The complementarity between partners can be horizontal, involving partners with different orientations or complementarity in technological competence. More usually, however, projects are based around a vertical relationship between the participants.