FRONTIER MANAGEMENT CONSULTING

Their core work

Frontier Management Consulting is a Bucharest-based management consulting SME that brings business coordination, stakeholder engagement, and dissemination expertise to EU research consortia. Rather than conducting laboratory research, they contribute the organizational and communication layer that large multi-country projects require — mapping actors, mobilizing sector voices, and translating research outputs toward policy and industry audiences. Their two H2020 participations are both Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs), confirming that project management and sector facilitation — not technical research — is their core offering. They operate at the intersection of business consulting practice and EU-funded science policy.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first project (2015–2016), Frontier focused on health innovation equity — specifically the research and innovation divide between Eastern European regions and Western Europe, working within a defined geographic corridor (Danube/Baltic). By their second project (2018–2021), they had moved into the bio-based economy, a much broader sectoral domain, and shifted from diagnosing regional gaps to actively mobilizing industry and civil society voices to accelerate an emerging sector. The trajectory suggests a deliberate pivot from health-sector policy coordination toward food-bio-environment nexus facilitation, likely following EU funding priorities under Horizon 2020's final years.

Frontier appears to be repositioning from Eastern European health equity advocacy toward broader bioeconomy and food-system sector facilitation, tracking closely with EU Green Deal and farm-to-fork funding priorities.

How they like to work

Frontier has never held a coordinator role across its H2020 history — it consistently enters projects as a participant, contributing non-technical expertise to consortia led by research institutions or larger organizations. With 19 unique partners across just 2 projects, they work in medium-to-large consortia (roughly 10+ partners each) rather than tight bilateral collaborations. This pattern suggests they are recruited for their soft-skills contribution — facilitation, dissemination, stakeholder mapping — rather than as a technical research lead.

Frontier has built connections with 19 unique partners spanning 12 countries from only two projects, indicating they join geographically diverse international consortia. Their network likely includes health ministries, research institutes, industry associations, and civil society organizations given the CSA nature of their projects.

What sets them apart

Frontier is one of very few Romanian private management consultancies with direct H2020 participation track record in both health innovation policy and bioeconomy — two sectors that rarely overlap in a single firm's portfolio. For consortium builders needing a Central/Eastern European partner who understands both EU project compliance and regional stakeholder landscapes, Frontier fills a gap that pure research institutions cannot. Their CEE anchoring is a practical asset for projects required to demonstrate broad geographic coverage across the EU.

Highlights from their portfolio

• BIOVoices
  Their largest project by funding (EUR 190,938) and the most recent, focused on accelerating the bio-based sector through stakeholder mobilization — a high-visibility topic aligned with EU Green Deal priorities.
• DanuBalt
  Their entry into H2020, addressing the politically sensitive health research divide between Eastern and Western Europe across the Danube–Baltic corridor, demonstrating early EU policy engagement.