From Networks to Mission Platforms: A Graded Architecture for Interdisciplinary Research at Institutional Scale

Large multidisciplinary research organisations face a well-documented tension: their breadth is precisely what makes them suited to complex societal challenges, yet their disciplinary structure (centres, areas, evaluation panels) makes interdisciplinary work costly to initiate and hard to sustain. This paper presents a longitudinal institutional case study of the approach adopted by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) — Spain’s largest public research organisation, with more than 1,500 research groups in around 120 institutes — to address that tension without restructuring the institution. From 2018 onward CSIC developed a graded set of three collaboration instruments: Conexiones (light, bottom-up thematic networks), Interdisciplinary Thematic Platforms (PTI: mission- oriented, three-year, challenge-driven platforms with an ESFRI-derived design questionnaire) and Extended Platforms (PTI+: large-scale platforms with a four-line work structure, a consortium- agreement style governance and centralised financial management, created to absorb investments above C10M). The design principles of each instrument, the formal texts that implemented them and the governance rules are presented (dual coordination across centres, assembly/executive-committee model, two-thirds quorum, individual veto, VICYT ratification, Team Science and Open Science recommendations). Publicly available documentary evidence on outcomes up to 31 August 2026 is then compiled for the best-documented platforms and networks, including the PTI Salud Global response to COVID-19, the QTEP quantum ecosystem, SusPlast pilot plants, the IPCC Interactive Atlas delivered under PTI Clima, the Conexiones cohorts created in 2023 and 2025, and the 2026 migration of the Teledetect remote-sensing platform into the EarthWatchHub Conexión. The documentary record supports four observations: (i) a pre-existing platform template enabled unusually rapid institutional mobilisation during COVID-19; (ii) the platform architecture and its core governance principles were adapted to an increase of roughly two orders of magnitude in financial scale; (iii) a graded portfolio allowed organisational migration between instruments instead of simple termination; and (iv) different instruments generated documented joint activities and outputs. The instruments were subsequently formalised, not discontinued, by the administration that succeeded the one that created them. A set of transferable design propositions is derived from the case, and the limitations of a documentary analysis without a counterfactual are discussed. The contribution is a longitudinal institutional case showing how a large disciplinary research organisation can superimpose a graded set of transverse collaboration structures on its existing organisational backbone without dismantling it.