These are tough times for researchers and innovators

Uncertain how to fund your innovation or achieve your research ambitions or even safeguard your own position with such intense pressure to bring in external funding?

You might be thinking about FP7 as a possible funding option, perhaps for the first time – and with good reason!

The EC’s FP is bucking the trend towards cuts: FP7 will grow by 13.3% to €7.6 billion in 2012. It is a very large and stable source of project funding.

And yet people who could win funding too often take a look at the FP and are turned off by the complexity of the application and the time and costs that go with it.

Even researchers with experience of the programmes can feel that it is a lottery or simply that the odds are stacked far too heavily against them to make the effort involved in writing a proposal worthwhile.

But with the right help you can take the pain out, minimise costs and win consistently.

Not all institutions and few companies have the expertise to produce the outstanding proposals that are now needed to win. In a nutshell, we can do it for you.

At A Bigger Splash Ltd we have fifteen years’ experience of proposal writing in all areas of the FPs and can turn your good idea into a winning proposal.

Our response – fast, affordable, competitive proposals

We work as part of your team to develop great proposals and know just how to weave together the different strands involved to create a winning bid without ‘making a meal of it’ – we have done it a lot and do it very successfully. The benefits we deliver are:

Giving the EC exactly what they are asking for – a project scoped and planned to fit the specifics of the call. It is surprising how often teams will try to sell a project they want to do rather than one the EC want to buy – this never works.

Remove the bureaucratic burden from your shoulders and take responsibility for final submission – the procedure is notoriously complex, but we’ll take care of all the administrative and budgeting details and ensure successful upload of the final version in time for the deadline.

Create a balanced and complementary partnership – increasingly the mix will have to be made up from business and public sector teams and too often their interests diverge. We create ‘win-win’ projects ensuring all partners remain committed throughout.

Put in place management structures that fit the size and type of project – too many of the models floating around are heavily over-engineered, complicating and inflating the time and cost of management which in almost all FP projects can be made very simple.

A relentless focus on the critical win/lose parts of the proposal – too often teams base their proposals on descriptions of what they will do – this is actually relatively unimportant. The EC are now buying outcomes and ‘differences’ and care much less about activities. Crystal clear objectives and step change impacts above all else win projects.

Write key sections - tight deadlines, other commitments, unfamiliar formats and questions mean the proposal text doesn't always have the right level of polish and doesn't sell the project effectively. Often the most efficient way of getting the job done is for us to tackle key sections in close collaboration with you.

Our offer - why choose to work with us?

We believe we offer an outstanding value to price ratio for proposal development in a field where things are often made too complicated.

We will beat competitors on price – because we know where the key levers are in FP proposals we are able to get to the heart of the matter very quickly and produce proposals very cost effectively. And if we think your team has a chance of winning we’ll quote cheaper than our competitors.

We will always hit seemingly impossible deadlines – we will take on rush jobs and rescue jobs and by prioritising key aspects of the work we’ll help push it over the evaluation thresholds even at the last minute

We have a very transparent business model – you pay us only for the time it takes to create the proposal: no complex win bonuses or demands for future management roles. Not to say that we don’t help winners with negotiation or management: we do when invited to, and we often are.

The work will be done by an experienced expert – we don’t farm the work out to juniors, we don’t have any juniors in fact. All our consultants are experienced work winners with expertise in every stage of proposal development and management.

Helping new participants make a breakthrough – the FP can look like a closed shop from the outside, but we have an excellent record of helping new participants and first time teams win. Anyone with an outstanding idea can break into the EC funding streams.

We often win – if we are closely involved in a project we would expect it to be a winner, for those we help develop from the first phases we are up around 75/80% success rates.

Who we are and how to get in touch

A Bigger Splash Ltd is a UK company with offices in London and Barcelona. We work with clients from across the EU and beyond.

We work in all sectors of the sciences, social sciences and humanities and bring a rigorous, logical approach to all aspects of proposal development. Our work is based on the Logical Framework method that underpins the EC’s own thinking about FP projects. We have worked successfully with teams on topics ranging from traditional artisanal balsamic vinegar manufacturing to DNA chips, advanced research in cancer and quantum computing.

We have won funding of many millions of Euros for clients and have a very high rate of success with proposals submitted. Our level of involvement depends on the needs of the consortium. We mostly work in very close and intensive collaboration with project leaders, but have also had excellent results by mentoring a group of proposals at the same institution and have helped push many proposals over the winning line by giving a final thorough review before submission. We’ll be able to find a way of working that meets your needs.

Contact

We look forward to hearing from you for a discussion of your FP project idea and how we might work together on developing it. Please feel from to contact us by email at info@abiggersplash.co.uk or use the form below and we will get back to you as soon as possible.