Novation Europe.
Helping you with the challenges
you face
Europe’s Research and Innovation landscape is rich with opportunities – but for many, it feels like a maze.
The European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme promises transformative funding and collaboration, creating a vast ecosystem for ground-breaking projects to emerge.
Yet the path is paved with complexity, rules, and risks that often deter even the most determined innovators. The landscape can prove to be daunting, as navigating through various processes and requirements feels overwhelming.
Too often, brilliant ideas stall — not for lack of merit, but because the system feels impenetrable and support is stretched thin on top of limited time to take part in light of other competing priorities and day-to-day tasks.
Academia
You have pockets of European success across the institution, but building a sustainable, transformative culture of engagement with Horizon Europe is the real challenge. The programme’s sheer complexity often amplifies internal barriers, leaving a portfolio that falls short of your university’s true potential.
We see this pattern consistently:
A culture of caution fuelled by complexity and habit.
The perceived difficulty of Horizon Europe creates institutional inertia. Promising ideas are self-censored as ambitious academics—discouraged by stories of bureaucracy and low success rates—turn back to more familiar domestic funding streams.
Reactive support
Your research office is highly skilled but stretched. The administrative weight of each proposal forces teams into a reactive cycle, firefighting deadlines for a small group of “usual suspects” rather than cultivating new entrants. Specialist know-how is often uneven too, with gaps across different schemes such as ERC, MSCA, or Innovation Actions.
Fragmented engagement
individual efforts can remain isolated with no learning from successes or failures, and good practice from certain groups isn’t shared – leading to a constant ‘reinventing of the wheel’ with each new proposal or project.
A disconnect with strategic goals
European participation is too often treated as an opportunistic add-on by researchers rather than a strategic pillar. Yet Horizon engagement is directly aligned with the university’s core ambitions: global visibility, research culture, talent development, and long-term financial sustainability.
Novation Europe
We partner with universities to overcome these systemic and cultural barriers. Through advanced facilitation, strategic alignment, and tailored capability-building and support from strategic to bids and portfolio management, we help you embed a confident, proactive approach to Horizon into a coherent, thriving, and sustainable European portfolio.
Associations and professional organisations
Your association has a clear mandate: to represent your members and shape your sector’s future in Europe. Yet there is often a gap between this ambition and the ability to mobilise members into a powerful, coordinated force.
The challenge is both internal and external: Horizon Europe’s complexity, evolving work programmes, and shifting deadlines amplify capacity constraints and make engagement feel overwhelming.
We see this pattern consistently:
Untapped influence and mismatched strategy
Strategic plans often highlight “European engagement,” but without insider knowledge it can be hard to shape agendas and prioritise the most promising calls. Opportunities to feed sector priorities into work programmes are missed, leaving your association and members under-represented in funded projects and capturing only a fraction of the available funding.
A disconnected membership
Some members successfully participate in European projects, but act alone. They may overlook the association for dissemination or community-building, and their experience isn’t shared, leaving other members to struggle and limiting collective impact.
The execution gap
Associations are lean and lack the specialist capacity to coordinate joint bids or secure seats in consortia. Without proactive support, opportunities to increase funded projects and sectoral funding share are lost.
A failure to deliver on the mission
The sector’s collective voice is weakened, members miss collaborative opportunities, and the association risks being seen as peripheral rather than central to European activity. Success requires both association-led participation and enabling members’ individual achievements.
Novation Europe
We partner with associations to bridge the gap between strategy, members, and execution. We provide the expertise to prioritise the right calls, coordinate members effectively, and support end-to-end bid and project management. The result: a coordinated, influential, and visible sector voice that increases funded projects, captures a larger share of sectoral funding, and delivers tangible value for your entire membership.
Private sector
Corporate companies and SMEs recognise the potential of European programmes to drive innovation, grow markets, and secure funding. Yet participation often falls short of its potential. Horizon Europe’s complexity, shifting calls, and compliance requirements can clash with business priorities, creating friction and risk.
We see this pattern consistently:
A disconnect between corporate strategy and participation.
Projects are sometimes pursued opportunistically or driven by a single department, with limited alignment to broader organisational objectives. Even when funded, projects may deliver suboptimal business impact because operational teams are not fully engaged or aware of what participation entails.
Reliance on individual champions.
Engagement often depends on one motivated person or small team. High turnover, reassignment, or departure can disrupt momentum, erode institutional knowledge, and leave projects vulnerable.
Limited Internal Awareness and Capability.
Other teams — finance, legal, operations — may not fully understand the requirements of participation. Without organisational buy-in, compliance, reporting, and exploitation of project outcomes can falter.
Complexity and Perceived Risk.
The bureaucracy, rules, and administrative load of EU programmes can feel overwhelming. Competing priorities and unfamiliarity with EU processes reduce confidence in taking a leading role and limit proactive engagement.
Unrealised Innovation and Growth.
Fragmented engagement and internal misalignment limit the number of projects funded, reduce the share of available sectoral funding captured, and weaken the potential for strategic partnerships. The organisation misses opportunities to translate European participation into tangible business value.
Novation Europe
We partner with companies to bridge internal and external barriers. Through strategic alignment, portfolio mapping, and end-to-end support — from identifying calls and shaping proposals to coordinating delivery teams and managing projects — we help you build resilient, repeatable capability across the organisation. The result: a sustainable European presence that increases funded projects, strengthens networks, and maximises innovation impact.
Public sector
Public bodies exist to deliver value for citizens, and European programmes are a powerful tool to achieve this. Yet engagement is often fragile and fragmented: siloed internal processes, high staff turnover, and the complexity of Horizon Europe undermine momentum and reduce the ability to secure and deliver funded projects.
We see this pattern consistently:
A disconnect between strategy and delivery.
Your strategic team identifies promising calls, but operational teams responsible for delivery are often engaged too late. Without early buy-in, projects are seen as a burden, not an opportunity, creating internal resistance that delays critical ‘Go/No-Go’ decisions.
Reliance on key champions.
Participation frequently rests on a few motivated individuals. When these people leave, corporate memory is lost, relationships with partners are disrupted, and momentum collapses — forcing the organisation to repeatedly start from scratch.
A system prone to delays.
Managing the distinct strategic, technical, and financial inputs required for EU programmes creates bottlenecks. Delays in legal or financial approvals can jeopardise project start dates and damage reputation with partners.
Unrealised public value.
Internal structural barriers and lack of capability prevent organisations from fully leveraging European funding. Opportunities to innovate, enhance local services, and amplify societal impact remain untapped.
Novation Europe
We partner with public sector organisations to build resilient, sustainable European engagement. Acting as a bridge between strategy, delivery, and operational teams, we provide continuity, de-risk the process from bid development to project start, and help embed the capability to manage portfolios and capture funding consistently.
Organisations and people face the challenge of turning Horizon Europe from opportunities into active participation – not just as “token” participant.
Across all countries – from the EU and UK to those with new or renewed Association like Canada and Switzerland, as well as Low- and Medium-Income Countries – organisations face the multifaceted challenge of building networks, fostering trust, and enhancing visibility.
Organisations need insight, expertise, capacity and contacts to navigate complex policy frameworks, partnerships, and the diverse scheme and portfolio management challenges that accompany successful participation.
Read how Novation Europe can help you
Novation Europe helps organisations and people accelerate engagement and strengthen operational capabilities. We do this through tailored intelligence, scenario planning, and strategic facilitation, positioning, training including in-country support for visiting researchers and practitioners from countries as far afield as Canada, New Zealand, and our LMIC partners.
Whilst our primary focus on the UK, Novation Europe also serves as a natural partner for organisations seeking to connect with UK expertise and science base. This dual role – supporting outward engagement and facilitating inward collaboration – is key to building deep and sustainable EU R&I partnerships.
Novation Europe provides hands-on, practitioner-led support to help organisations unlock the full potential of European Research and Innovation.
We bring lived experience: we have shaped strategies, written bids, delivered projects, and built partnerships within and alongside European institutions, international consortia, and global organisations.
Because we are embedded in the European R&I landscape, our advice is both technically rigorous and strategically relevant. We help clients navigate Horizon Europe’s complexity, align participation with organisational goals, and maximise funded projects, portfolios, and sectoral impact.
Our approach goes beyond securing grants. We focus on building confidence, embedding capability, and strengthening organisations.
Whether supporting universities, associations, public bodies, or companies, we act as a catalyst — bridging strategy, delivery, and execution, and creating the structures that turn individual projects into a sustainable, repeatable European journey.
