A methodology was developed to prioritize stakeholders of a collaborative research and innovation (R&I) project in the circular
bioeconomy area, towards enhancing its benefits from a multi-perspective point of view. The concept of R&I project benefits was
broken down into criteria, evaluating different attributes related to the project outputs and outcomes, to the project management
processes, and to the social, environmental and economic dimensions. The devised methodology was based on a combination of
the analytic network process multicriteria decision making method and the key benefit categories from the P5 standard for
sustainability in project management. The P5 standard has been shown to adequately frame the benefits to stakeholders of R&I
projects in the topic of circular bioeconomy. Key benefits identified by the experts relate to the categories “society and costumers”
and “consumption”. The following stakeholders should have priority in the development of the project stakeholder management
plan: research team members, leaders at the consortium organizations, project management team members and environmental
NGOs. Future research will include a longitudinal study of the perceived stakeholder and benefit categories priority over time.
The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support
through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020 and UIDP/00690/2020), SusTEC
(LA/P/0007/2021) and CEMMPRE (UIDB/00285/2020). This article is a result of the project “BacchusTech -
Integrated Approach for the Valorisation of Winemaking Residues” (POCI-01-0247-FEDER-069583), supported by
the Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Programme (COMPETE 2020), under the PORTUGAL
2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
