LEAP FORWARD

Their core work

LEAP FORWARD is a Belgian private company specialising in agricultural knowledge management and multi-actor innovation processes. Their work centres on building and connecting knowledge repositories and digital platforms that help farmers, researchers, advisors, and policymakers share best practices across Europe. Both their EU projects are Coordination and Support Actions — meaning their contribution is not laboratory research but rather the design, facilitation, and dissemination of knowledge systems. They operate as a bridge-builder between scientific outputs and practical end users in agriculture and forestry.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

LEAP FORWARD entered H2020 participation in 2019 with EURAKNOS, focused on connecting existing thematic networks and positioning them as knowledge reservoirs — a structural, network-level challenge. By 2020, with Eureka, the emphasis shifted toward the end user and practical application: the keywords pivot to 'end user', 'multi-actor', 'open access', and 'knowledge e-platform', indicating a move from network architecture toward usability and accessibility for practitioners on the ground. In just two projects, there is a clear trajectory from connecting institutions to connecting institutions with farmers and advisors — a maturation toward impact-oriented knowledge transfer.

LEAP FORWARD is moving toward practical knowledge infrastructure that reaches farmers and land managers directly, making them a natural partner for projects that need to translate research outputs into usable tools or advisory services.

How they like to work

LEAP FORWARD has participated exclusively as a consortium member, never as a project coordinator — suggesting they bring a defined, specialist contribution rather than driving project strategy. Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 29 unique partners across 15 countries, which indicates they join large, pan-European consortia typical of CSA actions under the multi-actor approach. This profile fits an organisation that excels at contributing a specific capability — knowledge facilitation, platform thinking, or end-user engagement — within a broader team.

With 29 consortium partners across 15 countries from just two projects, LEAP FORWARD participates in notably large and geographically diverse networks. Their reach is fully European, consistent with the pan-EU ambitions of agricultural knowledge-sharing programmes.

What sets them apart

LEAP FORWARD is a private company — not a university or research institute — specialising in the design of agricultural knowledge systems, which is relatively rare in this space dominated by public bodies and farmer associations. Based in Gent, a city with strong ties to agricultural sciences and EU agri-policy circles, they are well-positioned to bridge applied research and field-level practice. For consortium builders, they bring the practical side: how to package, present, and deliver agricultural knowledge to the people who actually need it.

Highlights from their portfolio

• Eureka
  Their largest project by budget (EUR 282,500) and the one with the clearest mission — building a European open-access repository of best agricultural practices with explicit end-user and multi-actor design.
• EURAKNOS
  Their debut H2020 project, addressing the structural challenge of connecting dispersed thematic agricultural networks into a coherent European knowledge architecture.