I have been learning from, I have been working with and I have been teaching champions in successful grant proposal development the last 10 years. The value that I have received from these encounters as well as the personal and professional development that I have been experiencing, was really extraordinary and also enjoyable. I always try to surround myself with people with higher standards and success records since this empowers and motivates me to progress continually. Currently, my key professional domain is coaching and supporting actors to exploit successfully Horizon 2020 and in this respect, I have decided to publish the champions in the most competitive programme and share them with you so that to start also engaging with them in your area and learning one from the other. All organisations that have been awarded Horizon 2020 projects in the first three years of the programme have been identified and ranked according to the total number of the projects they are involved as well as of the EC contribution that they have been allocated.

The results are surprising and in some cases, they are influenced by the national research structure (e.g. see in France) but in any case, they are quite useful and interesting. Therefore, in the first 10 places based on the total number of projects, we see the following organisations:

1. CNRS (FR),
2. Fraunhofer (DE),
3. Cambridge University (UK),
4. Oxford University (UK),
5. CEA (FR),
6. CNR (IT),
7. UCL (UK),
8. CSIC (ES),
9. Max Planck Society (DE) and
10. Kobenhavns universitet (DK)

In the same manner, in the first 10 places based on the total EC contribution, we see a different list but not with many changes:

1. Max Planck Society (DE,
2. CNRS (FR),
3. Fraunhofer (DE),
4. CEA (FR)
5. Cambridge University (UK),
6. Oxford University (UK),
7. UCL (UK)
8. Imperial College (UK),
9. CNR (IT),
10. CSIC (ES)

In any case, I personally believe that any organisation that has been involved in Horizon 2020 should consider this journey as a marathon that its mission is not to get first but to complete the racing, i.e. to deliver the expected project results, benefits and impacts as promised.

However, this mission should not underestimate the value of ranking all Horizon 2020 actors up to the end of year 2016 since it does not only allow us to identify the champions and learn from and work with but at the same to motivate us to do even better next year.

Therefore, I strongly advise you to download both publications from here that contain the ranking of all Horizon 2020 actors (15.000 plus organisations), see their performance (position, country code, no. of projects, total EC contribution). Also, in case, you wish to download the epublication on “who are the champions per topic” in Horizon 2020, you can find out how from this section.

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