"RFPs put people in competition with each other, they do not encourage collaboration"

- panelist at a public health event I am attending

But doesn't any funding mechanism that has a fixed amount of money to give away put people in competition with each other? What are the best ways to minimize this?

I respond to (advisory) RFPs for a living. Many of them are large and monolithic because clients haven’t taken the time to research and play to the relative strengths of different respondents by splitting them up. Yet collaboration on RFPs is often expensive because you split the revenue but double the overhead costs

Aviator, diver, Etherean, nexialist, PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

In my view the best option is to run smaller, discrete, piecemeal RFPs that give a chance to niche/boutique players who are innovators in one area, as opposed to the winner-takes-all approach of wide RFPs that large, entrenched incumbents with no collaboration incentive are poised to win due to their scale.