Funded R&D is its own engineering discipline
Running R&D on commercial budgets is one thing. Running it on TÜBİTAK 1501/1505/1507, KOSGEB R&D, Horizon Europe Cluster, or EUREKA / Eurostars funding is a different discipline — the technical work is similar, the project management is structurally different, and the failure modes are entirely program-specific.If you're running an industrial R&D project funded under one of these programmes for the first time, here's the practical framing that's helped our customers most.
The funding programmes, briefly
- TÜBİTAK 1501 (Industry R&D) — for established companies, partial cost reimbursement, technical-economic evaluation. The bread-and-butter Turkish industrial R&D grant.
- TÜBİTAK 1507 (SME R&D Initial) — first-time R&D, lighter formal requirements, lower budget cap.
- TÜBİTAK 1505 (University-Industry Collaboration) — when a university partner is part of the project. Different reporting structure.
- Horizon Europe (EU) — multi-country consortia, two-stage proposal evaluation, bigger budgets, much heavier admin.
- EUREKA / Eurostars — cross-border, market-driven, lighter than Horizon for SMEs.
- KOSGEB R&D / Innovation — Turkish SME-focused, smaller scale, faster decisions.
The right pick depends on company size, partners, market scope, and how much administrative overhead the team can absorb.
Proposal: the document is the project
For all of these programmes, the funded project is what's in the proposal — not the project the team intended. Common mistakes:- Specifying activities that are too narrow → no flexibility when reality diverges
- Specifying outputs that are too vague → reviewers don't know what success looks like; auditors don't know what to verify
- Underestimating the academic / theoretical novelty argument → especially in TÜBİTAK and Horizon, "novelty vs state of the art" is a major scoring axis
- Confusing R&D with product development → if you can do it with off-the-shelf tools and a known method, it's not R&D
Eligible costs: what counts and what doesn't
Each programme has its own eligibility rules. Common patterns:- Personnel costs — almost always eligible, but with strict timekeeping requirements. Time spent on the project must be auditable.
- Materials & consumables — eligible if directly used. Capital equipment is usually partially eligible (depreciation, not full purchase).
- Subcontracting / external services — capped percentage, often around 20-30 % of total project budget.
- Travel — eligible if project-related, with documentation.
- Indirect costs / overhead — flat rate, programme-specific. Usually 25 % of personnel.
The accounting structure must align with the eligibility rules from project start. Retroactively making expenses fit is painful at audit.
Reporting: structure work for the report, not just for the work
Funded projects have semi-annual or annual reports. The report is judged on what the project committed to in the proposal vs what it delivered.The pattern that works:
- Map the proposal's WBS / activities to the team's actual workstreams from day one
- Maintain a running log of activities, decisions, and results, organised by activity
- Don't wait until report-writing time to discover that activity 3 has no documented evidence
- Photograph / archive prototypes, test results, technical decisions as they happen
Audits: assume them
TÜBİTAK conducts technical and financial audits. EU funding conducts both. The audit asks:- Were the personnel actually working on the project (timesheets, deliverables traceable to people)?
- Were the materials actually consumed by the project (delivery notes, project codes on invoices)?
- Were the technical milestones met (deliverables, demonstrators, test reports)?
- Are the costs eligible per the programme's specific rules?
Documentation discipline during the project is much cheaper than reconstruction at audit time.
The IP question
Each programme has different IP rules:- TÜBİTAK 1501 — IP belongs to the company.
- TÜBİTAK 1505 — IP shared between company and university per a project-specific agreement.
- Horizon Europe — IP belongs to whoever generated it, with grant-back / licensing obligations to other consortium members.
- EUREKA — IP per consortium agreement.
The IP terms must be clear before the project starts, not negotiated mid-project. We've seen multi-partner Horizon projects stuck for months on IP terms that should have been settled at the proposal stage.
The deliverable that's actually evaluated
At the end of the project, the demo / prototype / functional model is what reviewers see. Technical reports are read selectively; the demo is watched in full. Plan the project's last sprint specifically around the demo. Don't let it be an afterthought.One pattern we'd warn about
Treating funded R&D as "free engineering". The administrative load is real, the reporting load is real, and the project structure constrains what the team can do. The funding pays for some, but not all, of the cost. If the technical work is genuinely R&D and the team can absorb the admin, the funding is leverage. If not, the leverage works the other way.What programmes are you running on? And has anyone successfully bridged a TÜBİTAK 1501 project into a Horizon Europe consortium?
