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Getting involved in a collaborative research and development project can be one of the most exciting, rewarding and business changing experiences you and your organisation ever take on. The opportunities to push the boundaries of technology, solve major problems, open up new markets and be part of a leading edge team, drive thousands of companies and universities to work together every year. All economies recognise these benefits and encourage these collaborations by offering grant funding, tax relief schemes and other benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Whilst not every collaborative research project is supported by funding from outside the consortium, a large percentage of projects are eligible for support from the governments, charities and other organisations. Not surprisingly, all these organisations lay down criteria for what they can and can’t support. The rules get stricter when tax payers’ money is involved and where the support must comply with national and international regulations.

Whether you plan to run a grant funded project or not, all collaborative R&D projects require some form of legally binding agreement between the partners that controls their relationship both during and after the project. This document goes under various titles, they are commonly referred to as consortium agreements, collaboration agreements or framework for collaboration documents. Regardless of the name, they all do basically the same job.

Managing a collaborative project differs considerably from normal project management for two reasons. Firstly the objectives of the project are multiple, in other words not all the participants share the same motivations for being involved in the project. Secondly, not all the participants work for you. In a traditional project, even if you use sub-contractors, the project manager normally has some line management control over all the resources involved in the project. In a collaborative project they do not.

This chapter is intended to help you run your project. I have already said that I don’t intend this book to cover the basics of project management; there are any numbers of excellent resources to help you with that. There are however, some aspects of collaborative projects that need special attention.

A great many collaborative projects involve academic partners as the source of new technology or to exploit a specialist skill set, resource or facility. This chapter is provided to benefit industrialists who have not worked with academics before. It is not that academics are strange, it is just that they have different motivations and attitudes from industrial or commercial partners. Once understood however, they are formidable partners and a source of outstanding capability.

This chapter is provided to benefit academics who have not previously worked with industrial or commercial partners on a collaborative project. Again in order to convey the information I am going to have to generalise a little.

Projects always carry risks. R&D projects are particularly risky due to the fact that the innovations might not work as hoped. In addition to this fundamental risk, collaborative projects also suffer from their own unique set of issues and problems. This chapter covers some of the common pitfalls and provides guidance on how to spot, manage and hopefully overcome them.

Although this is the penultimate chapter in the book, exploitation is something that you need to be thinking about right from the start. There is very little point carrying out the project unless it brings you some form of benefit. Exploitation is about how you achieve and capitalise on that benefit.

The final stages of the project are very important and have a disproportional affect on the overall success of the project. Your consortium will need to remain vigilant to any remaining risks and ensure that all outstanding work is completed satisfactorily. This will be an particularly busy period for the project manager especially if grant funding is involved and the funding organisation requires the preparation of detailed final reports and evaluations. Even if this is not the case, there will be internal reviews and lessons to be learned from an analysis of the projects performance.