After weeks of intense work, you've finally completed your ERC grant proposal.

Every complex detail of your groundbreaking research is carefully woven into the text. Confident, you send it to your grants office for review. The response that comes back in an email the next day:

“I don’t understand what you mean here. It’s not clear to me why you would do it this way.”

Your offended demeanor is taken over by a feeling of dread.

Dread that you are about to enter into rounds of confusing discussions about the content of your proposal.

One of the biggest challenges we face as human beings is initiating the creative process. We fear not knowing where to start. We imagine ourselves becoming lost, investing a lot of effort and having nothing to show for it.

This starting resistance is made manyfold worse when we are engaged in anything collaborative. We fear that what we produce has to be near perfect before anyone sees it.

This is the problem we face when endeavouring to collaboratively create a funding proposal for a consortium project. Sometimes we have to count on up to 15 or more people getting over their start-up anxiety.

Sustaining research funding is a constant challenge for academics. This post explores how consortium projects can act as 'flywheels' for research, providing sustained momentum and opportunities. Learn how to leverage these collaborative efforts to build research capacity, mainstream novel ideas, and achieve long-term success in your academic career. Discover the hidden power of collective intelligence and how it can supercharge your research funding strategy.

What do Wikipedia, the Manhattan Project, and the discovery of the structure of DNA have in common?

They are all triumphs of collective intelligence - the synergistic problem-solving power of groups.

As we navigate an increasingly complex world, understanding and harnessing this power is becoming essential for progress, and even survival.

In the race between AI and human intelligence, many assume AI is destined to win.

The AI algorithms of social media have already stripped us of the ability to have a meaningful online dialogue as everyone is walled off into their own online bubbles.

Instead of letting the AI of social media divide us, we should be pulling together with intelligent and respectful dialogue. We should look to our collective intelligence.

Consortium projects have the potential to be about much more than publishing papers in the publication process.

Building a process that protects authorship positions early on enables people to think and work together more effectively.

By the end of this article, you will have strategies for boosting your optimism in scientific innovation.

Most importantly, you will have ideas of how to improve your ability to be a leader or a leading organization striving for medical breakthroughs.

By the end of this article, you will have insight into:

The characteristics of high performance medical research

The value of having a comprehensive strategy

The ways in which a non profit strategic plan and a consortium project plan are similar.

The types of problems solved by strategic planning and consortium projects.

A template for non profit strategic planning and building consortium projects.

Discover how research collaborations can be enhanced by implementing effective strategies and maximizing the benefits of collaboration. From strategic planning to fostering open communication, this article delves into actionable insights for researchers and research organizations. Learn how to create a culture of collaboration, leverage collaboration agreements as project plans, communicate failures to tap into collective intelligence, embrace diverse outputs beyond papers, and become a valuable team player. Unlock the exponential potential of research collaborations and pave the way for groundbreaking discoveries. Read on to enhance the benefits of your research collaborations today.

“All executives know that strategy is important. But almost all also find it scary, because it forces them to confront a future they can only guess at.”

Roger Martin

If developing strategy is scary then so is finding a strategic planning consultant.

Selecting the right nonprofit strategic planning consultant is one of the most important decisions you can make.

The wrong consultant can be a huge waste of time.

Speed!

Its all about speed.

How fast can you make decisions? How fast can you build a project? How fast can you get a new team up and running?

But, slow is smooth and smooth is fast (1).

Disease interception is a term that is being more frequently used. But is it a trendy buzz-phrase or something that deserves more attention.

It is common to talk about having a strategic plan.

One goes through strategic planning exercises and one consults the strategic plan. However, there is a problem with this common refrain.

A strategy is not a plan.

A strategy is a set of integrated choices that can help you increase focus and apply resources in a way that makes it so that you are more likely to succeed.

Acknowledging and managing emotions are essential components of effective consortium projects.

Emotional intelligence is not just a personal attribute, but a collective one; it fuels discussion, prevents groupthink and contributes to collective intelligence.

Moonshot thinking is a strategy accessible to all. Here you will learn practical strategies for transforming ideas and data into actionable projects.