The intrinsic barriers to inter-institutional collaboration are high. The issues involved in lowering these barriers are not yet widely understood. The primary inefficiencies identified to date are in information dissemination and proposal submission and review. Most information about the Inter-Institutional Collaborative seems to have been disseminated via Integrators and the Kellogg Collective Leadership team. These persons have the advantage of considerable exposure to issues of collective leadership.
Wider dissemination remains a continuing issue.
The proposal submission and review process for the first mini-grant was rather ragged. Such difficulties should rapidly disappear. However, a more subtle inefficiency emerged that was perhaps not fully anticipated in the project development process. It should be noted that for the most part both the principal investigators on the first mini-grant proposal and also the Integrator reviewers have considerable experience within their own institutions at proposal writing, budget preparation, and program development. Notwithstanding, the various participants sometimes perceived issues such as budget format, proposal documentation, and adherence to format requirements differently.