Fase 3: Phase 3: Negotiation. Arrangement of joint projects and network management.

This third phase goes deep to specify the process of the arrangement and negotiation developed in the previous phase, in order to enlarge and draw up the diverse commitments that work as institutional and financial support for the Agenda. Its objective is to facilitate processes of agreement and negotiation so that, around the priority lines of attention on which the call was made, working tables are organized by area to promote the grouping of preliminary projects received so that the formulation of projects is joint, multidisciplinary and inter-institutional.

Thus, in this phase, a work team is implemented made up of technical evaluation commissions, advisors and institutional partners who establish and validate the criteria for the selection and evaluation of projects, that is, they establish the terms of reference for the presentation of the projects, according to some of the knowledge management modalities that are broken down below:

Research: knowledge generation and experimental development projects.

Training: Projects to create or strengthen human, professional or technical capacities, continuous education and training associated with specific projects

Modernization: Technological development projects, support for organizational modernization and strengthening of technological capacities.

Computerization: Projects for access to information and communication technologies and information systems associated with productive or social developments.

Promotion: Projects for the dissemination of knowledge and technology and the generation of a culture of innovation.

Articulation of Networks: Projects that articulate networks, as well as local, national or international cooperation around knowledge and technologies.

These modalities open a wide range of forms of participation of actors and institutions, from the presentation of pre-projects in any or several of them. On the part of the coordinating body, the process is managed by a work team (the Agenda team) led by an Agenda Coordinator accompanied by an Agenda advisor and a group of technicians.

Some relevant characteristics that emerge as added value to the application of this procedure are the following:
From the Agenda projects: they must be obtained from interdisciplinary and inter-institutional pre-projects through which it is established among the partners:

• Clearly defined objectives and timescales.
• Orientation established through the lines of attention detected in the process of building the innovation agendas.
• Identification and clearly established commitment of the project's applicant as a user of its results.
• Compliance with the project evaluation criteria: relevance, opportunity, feasibility and excellence.
• Shared efforts in terms of budget, human resources, infrastructure, equipment and information.

Strategic partnerships: alliances between institutions related to scientific research, public policy managers and the private sector for the financing of projects, where usefulness and applicability are based on

• Cooperation and exchange.
• The variety of options for working together in the generation of scientific and technological knowledge applicable to the solution of specific problems.
• The medium-term commitment.
• The opportunity that resides in the success, the trajectory and the capacities of the institutions involved.

Finally, this space will be the starting point for an innovation network where creators, disseminators and users of knowledge and technologies will articulate to produce solutions and take advantage of opportunities. This initial network also crystallizes two vital commitments of the Agendas: the co-financing of projects, and secondly, to become the mechanism which makes it possible for the knowledge and technologies demanded to be effectively transferred and inserted into the productive or social environment which requires them. This phase also makes it possible to distinguish and obtain specific and detailed information about the scientific environment and the real demand in terms of areas and lines of research.

The following criteria are used to evaluate the integration of the preliminary projects received:

• Inter-institutionality: preferably they should be proposed by networks involving several institutions.
• Transdiciplinary: designed to address problems that seek answers from an integrated perspective.
• Co-financing: proposals whose financing will be covered by several institutions involved.
• Beneficiaries and/or users of research results: proposals that define the beneficiaries of the research.

The evaluation is carried out by the technical committees of the area belonging to the promoting institution, which are made up of members with a high level of academic and research experience, as well as people with great expertise in the public and private world who can make judgements about the beneficiaries and the formation of inter-institutional networks (relevance and social impact) from the public, private and civil society administration and management (opportunity scenario).

Subsequently, through a written communication, the proposer of the research is informed if its preliminary draft:

• Qualifies: continues to the next stage of formulating its research project with the observations, suggestions and recommendations that may be made.
• Does not qualify: does not proceed to the project formulation stage.
• Subject to negotiation: at this stage workshops for the formulation of projects arise, negotiations to be held with the various institutions that formulated different preliminary projects on the same line of research, to be combined in a single effort and with greater inter-institutional and interdisciplinary participation.

All those pre-projects which were classified as being subject to negotiation will participate in the project formulation working groups, using the methodology of the Logical Framework, which is carried out in the following phase.