F1: M., researcher EUR
It’s about developing partnerships broadly: clarifying the “why” of
collaboration and strengthening partners’ capacity to collaborate—mindset,
competencies, and attitude. You help collaboration run well (negotiation, conflict
management), and you’re also connected to the purpose. You’re independent, but
not neutral, because you care about achieving the collaboration’s goal. Facilitators wear multiple hats: meeting facilitation, negotiation, mediation, etc. Over time your role shifts—early on you do research (stakeholder/market research, mapping who should be involved).
F2: F., researcher barca
The role can shift from one person to another during the partnership. What is important about the role is not so much the formal official role, but rather the informal power and influence. governance shifts as the alliance develops. So the orchestrators’ role role was to keep the communication flow and to facilitate
governance shifts, rather than to hold influence or power.
F3: M., Digi
bring a lot of different organizations together. And I try to connect them, guide them, and see how I can best support them to achieve the best
result. facilitate sessions as an innovation facilitator, or you work on how different innovation
methodologies (which we also have from DigiCampus) can be implemented to get the best result in a session or in a specific part of the project. As a project leader I think you do many similar things, but more across the entire project. So: how do all the pieces come together, how do all the organizations come together, and how can you ensure the whole project reaches the best ending or result. I don’t steer on what we’re going to do, but on how we get there. Once a direction is chosen, I make sure we translate it into concrete plans, stay on the right timeline, and keep the budget in check. My role is to ensure that decisions don’t just get made — they actually get executed.
F4: M., Digi-ICTU
it’s often a role where you connect different parties. Whether my role is more directing or supportive depends on the situation. A good example: in the “Co-Create Your Research” project on labor-saving technologies, my involvement varied a lot by organization. P-Direkt already had an internal team experienced in working with students, so they could largely guide the process themselves — my role was mostly coordinating to make sure things happened. CAK, on the other hand, had no such experience, so I spent much more time upfront explaining what to expect, and continued supporting and facilitating throughout. Same project, very different roles.
F5: A., PBA
I prefer the term “partnership architect” over facilitator or broker. A facilitator is often seen as someone who helps people communicate in the room, while a broker suggests making connections or reselling — neither fully captures what I do. A partnership architect sets up the structure for the partnership itself. My role is to help organizations come together around a shared objective. In my current role at ISO, I also act as a broker — proactively identifying relevant partners based on the organization’s strategic priorities, mapping their partnering capacity, and structuring a portfolio of partnerships that serve different objectives without creating conflicts between them.
F6: A., Signalen - VNG
My role, community manager, is essentially that of a linking pin between the community of municipalities and Amsterdam’s product owner. I collect input, facilitate voting on feature priorities, share sprint review updates and newsletters, and make sure questions get answered — either by me or by other municipalities stepping in. The community itself is quite active; it’s not just me posting, others contribute too. I also maintain an overview of all feature wishes, linking them to relevant posts and people so nothing gets lost. Priorities are set based on broad community support and a simple impact-versus-effort logic. Features with little support or high development cost get parked, not dropped — everything gets registered. Beyond the platform itself, I also facilitate reference visits between municipalities and help make connections when one municipality’s solution could be relevant to others.
F7: L., PBA
External facilitator. Facilitator is there to guide communication, manage expectations, transfer insights into narratives and financial reports, but not strategic role. A big part of the role is relationship management. Make sure decisions on strategic level are clearly and understandably transferred to the operational level (simple summaries of meetings), explain decisions and gather feedback in one-on-one meetings with partners, checking in to see if partners need help or have worries and make sure all the different partners are getting out of the partnership what they want (everyone is in essence still pursuing their own goals, not necessarily one shared goal)
F8: A.
my role was essentially to bridge different worlds — connecting municipal staff, private sector partners, and donors, and making sure everyone trusted the process.
F9: J., Novum
Process guide and selects tools from toolbox: he follows the agreed innovation methodology as a framework, but within those boundaries decides for himself which working methods and approaches best suit the specific project. He is the discussion leader in sessions, designs the programme in consultation with the client, and ensures that all those involved come to see the issue in the same way — the “elephant” principle, where everyone sees a different part but collectively works towards the same whole. A core principle is that he lets the business do as much as possible and builds as little as possible himself — you only build in order to learn and validate, not to deliver. He also has a signalling role towards the PM: he spots trends, recognises new issues, and actively brings these forward. His role is therefore directive on process, facilitative on content.