The paper proposes a conceptual framework, linking value-oriented criteria, simulation approaches and knowledge sources, to support the value-driven assessment of Product/Service Systems in the preliminary product development phase. The paper describes the peculiarities of the Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) problem in the PSS domain, identifying relevant categories of criteria to guide the preliminary value assessment of Product/Service Systems. Each criteria has been analyzed and linked to the appropriate simulation method, and each method has been further associated to people/roles in the Virtual Enterprise who might possess relevant knowledge to populate the models. The value assessment of an aircraft engine component has been used as case study for the definition of the value attributes. The list of generic value-related criteria, coupled with the respective simulation approaches has to be considered the main result of the paper.

During the 3rd CIRP IPS2 conference an approach toward communicating the value contribution of different PSS design alternatives using colour-coded CAD models was presented. Building on this work, the paper presents and discusses the results of the testing activity undertaken to verify the effectiveness of the colour-coding approach. The paper describes the setting and the findings of a series of PSS Design Experiments involving 8 design teams composed by master students in product development. Through the application of protocol analysis to the recorded design sessions, the paper compares the behavior of the design teams when using colour-coded CAD models, instead of QFD-like numerical tables, for value communication in PSS conceptual design.

The paper proposes an approach to increase the decision makers’ awareness at the gate, when evaluating PSS design alternatives from a lifecycle and value oriented perspective. The paper illustrates a lightweight value visualization tool, running on top of existing CAD systems, supporting value visualization of a given part or assembly, thanks to color coding. Information from value assessment is in this way translated into visual features of the CAD 3D model. Despite the approach is still on a start-up phase, an early mock-up of the tool has been developed and applied to a real aircraft engine component, in order to verify the feasibility of the approach.

Emerging from a study in the European aerospace industry, this paper identifies a gap in the way value-related information is communicated to designers of hardware in the preliminary stages of Product Service System (PSS) design. To fit this gap a Lifecycle Value Representation Approach, named LiVReA, that uses color-coded 3D CAD models to enable value information to be translated into visual features, is presented. Such approach aims at enhancing designers’ awareness of the value contribution of an early design concept on the overall PSS offer by complementing requirements-based information with criteria reflecting the fulfillment of customers and system value. The paper details the development of the approach, its underlying rationale, the results of preliminary validation activities and the potential for industrial application in the light of the currently available PSS representation tools.

Emerging from an industrial case study in the aerospace industry, the paper proposes an approach to evaluate subsystem technology concepts from a life cycle perspective. The approach is composed by 5 main phases that aims to drive product designers towards more value-oriented design decisions. It is shown how different life cycle alternatives, such as the selling of a Product-Service- System instead of a traditional product, deeply impact the value of design alternatives. The described approach has been developed in collaboration with industrial partners and represents a potential instrument to enhance value-driven product design.

The paper presents an approach to visualize the knowledge sharing capabilities of Web 2.0 tools and mash-ups in the design of Product Service Systems. Drawing on data from the Swedish manufacturing industry, it proposes 12 dimensions on which bottom-up to...

Recent literature in Systems Engineering has suggested the use of “value” to drive decision-making activities during preliminary design. Here the choice of a technology for a system/component is often oriented by the outcomes of a value analysis. However, to correctly evaluate design trade-offs, a visual link has to be established between these results and the product requirements/geometry. The paper proposes the use of color-coded 3D CAD models to support the visualization of value analysis results in a Stage-Gate® process. The approach has been developed and exemplified within a case study related to the design of an aero-engine component, and has been demonstrated using SIEMENS NX HD3D Visual Reporting. Eventually, the paper presents the results of verification activities conducted in academia.

The design of complex systems requires detailed analysis to be moved earlier in the design process. Value Driven Design methodologies extend the Requirements Management and Systems Engineering processes to reduce time and costs needed to identify the right solution direction to be pursued in detailed design. Emerging from the findings of an EU FP7 research project, the paper describes an approach for preliminary concept selection, named EVOKE, that uses value as a basis for decision. EVOKE enables quick value analysis to be executed by component manufacturers by taking as input a set of value dimensions and drivers communicated by the system integrators, together with information about the high-level engineering characteristics of the sub-systems under consideration. The approach and its technological enablers are described in detail through the use of a case study related to the design of new intermediate compressor case for turbofan engines.

The development of complex products, characterized by long lifecycles and deep supply chains, requires enhanced capabilities to assess, in an early design stage, the value of a solution not merely from a requirement fulfillment perspective. The paper proposes a conceptual scenario, described in terms of activities, inputs, outputs, actors and mechanisms, which details how aircraft components can be developed and assessed with a focus on their value contribution at system level. The scenario proposes a set of methodological and technological tools needed to enable value assessment in preliminary design, and has been created and preliminary validated together with major European aerospace manufacturers. The importance of being able to communicate the lifecycle value contribution of design solutions during the development work emerged clearly from the study. In this spirit, an approach to visualize such contribution directly in a 3D CAD model (across a set of value criteria, dimensions and drivers) has been proposed and it is currently under development.

The design and implementation of a PLM solution in a cross-company environment is a complex and labour intensive operation, which is often coupled with a Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) project to better deploy technologies as well as methodologies and to target the system implementation on the real company needs. Enterprise Modelling (EM) languages are typically used to collect and share process knowledge among the BPR participants. Plenty of techniques are actually available at this scope and it is not always easy to understand how to select and use them in the different steps of re-engineering. The main purpose of this paper is to perform a qualitative analysis of three well known EM languages (IDEF, UML and ARIS) and to propose a new methodology, based on their integrated use, supporting BPR efforts in the Product Development domain.

The design and implementation of a new Knowledge Enabled Engineering (KEE) in the context of a Virtual Enterprise is a labour intensive and risky task. In order to check, before embarking on a full-scale implementation, if the system will satisfy initial expectations, physical prototypes (Pilots) have to be tested in a near real usage environment to obtain qualitative and quantitative information for the final tuning activity. This paper proposes a methodology to guide this Pilot specifications definition process. The main aim of the roadmap proposed is to support the KMS design team in configuring a Pilot solution able to provide valid feedbacks of final system behaviour both from a software and non-software point of view.On one side the methodology guides the definition of Pilot implementation specifications from a technical perspective. It helps engineers and knowledge experts in selecting, refining, merging and cascading down the initial heterogeneous Pilot high level objectives to a lower level, and in elaborating a functional description of the KMS prototype. It proposes, moreover, a structured framework to classify KMS' performance indicators to help the Pilot task force in properly carry out the validation task.The methodology, on the other side, pushes the design team in considering those behavioural and methodological issues that arise from the necessary change in work practice as a result of implementing the KMS within a Virtual design environment. In parallel with the definition of technical specifications, the roadmap supports knowledge experts in developing and testing a set of Knowledge Management guidelines, intended as a list of Best Practices and Lesson Learned aiming to help users in utilizing the potentialities of the new solution.The methodology has been developed within the European project VIVACE to support the design and implementation of a new KEE system in the aeronautical domain.

The aim of this paper is to understand how the Theory of Inventor's Problem Solving (TRIZ) may be applied in the development of product-service combinations. The authors have analyzed TRIZ modules and tools under a PSS (Product Service System) perspective to extract some principles of particular interest for their development. Basing on the outcomes of such investigation, the authors propose a framework for the use of TRIZ-based tools in product-service design.

This paper explores the application of Web 2.0 based technologies in the area of engineering product development. Growing on data collected from a case study in the Swedish manufacturing industry, the paper analyses the dichotomy between the prevailing hierarchical structure of CAD/PLM/PDM systems and the emerging principles of the Social Web, e.g. the self-organization of its users. It introduces the concept of Engineering 2.0, intended as a more bottom up and lightweight knowledge sharing approach supporting early stage design decisions within cross-functional product development teams. A set of scenarios related e.g. to the application of blogs, wikis, forums and tags in the engineering domain are eventuallypresented, highlighting opportunities, challenges and no-go areas.

The paper explores the application of Web 2.0 technologies to support product development efforts in a global, virtual and cross-functional setting. It analyses the dichotomy between the prevailing hierarchical structure of CAD/PLM/PDM systems and the principles of the Social Web under the light of the emerging product development trends. Further it introduces the concept of Engineering 2.0, intended as a more bottom up and lightweight knowledge sharing approach to support early stage design decisions within virtual and cross-functional product development teams. The lessons learned collected from a cross-company study highlight how to further developblogs, wikis, forums and tags for the benefit of new product development teams, highlighting opportunities, challenges and no-go areas.

Innovation is triggered by the cross-pollination of fields and disciplines. In product development, this means bringing together people with different expertise to develop breakthrough product and service offers. In spite of their great potential, cross-functional efforts are not yet adequately supported from a knowledge perspective, asking for a more open and bottom-up open approach to knowledge management. The paper aims to investigate how social technologies can enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing in complex, cross-functional and cross-organizational product development projects. It initially highlights the role of weak ties as enablers for more innovative design processes, especially when manufacturing companies move towards developing integrated offers mixing hardware, software and services. Emerging from data collected in two case studies conducted within the European aeronautical industry, it applies the Strength-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) framework to highlight how tools such as wikis, blogs, forum and microblogs can shorten and increase the quality of early design decisions. Furthermore it elaborates on how the design team can enhance its perception of the needs to be addressed and leverage its capability to develop solutions for the task at hand.

The main aim of this paper is to contribute in leveraging the rate of success of BPR in a Virtual Enterprise environment by proposing a framework supporting PLM system designers in selecting the best communication tool to be used in reengineering. The aim of the framework is to enhance interoperability between users, process owners and knowledge experts in design, by proposing a set of guidelines for the use of process modelling languages when dealing with the definition of PLM system specifications. This work has been conducted within the EU 6th Framework Programme VIVACE Project (Value Improvement through a Virtual Aeronautical Collaborative Enterprise) with the purpose to support the design and implementation of a Knowledge Enabled Engineering system able to improve product development process performances by leveraging past design experience.

Growing from data collected within a major EU research project in the aerospace domain, the paper proposes a candidate approach to assess the value of Product Service System design alternatives in a preliminary design phase. A framework composed of six main families of value criteria is proposed to support the product/service development team in evaluating the responsiveness and trade-off between alternative designs that target lifecycle commitment, withrespect to the impact on perceived values and stated needs and expectations. A visualization approach is also proposed to quickly communicate the value contribution of the design alternatives at the decision gate.

For traditional product-based companies PSSs represent a huge jump in the dark. Thus the introduction of PSS-like features, aiming to extend the artefact-based offering, is done gradually in the earliest stages, focusing on some value-adding aspects while excluding others. The main aim of this paper is to understand how the transition to PSS is initiated from a company perspective and how these PSS embryos are supported in everyday design activities. The authors have conducted a case study in the Swedish manufacturing industry to collect issues, challenges and opportunities related to the development of service-based offering in their early beginning. As a result they introduce the concept of knowledge-intensive products, seen as an intermediate step towards the full integration of products, software and services, and discuss their implication from a product development point of view.

In Product-Service Systems development, understanding of the customers' use of goods seems vital, since the product per se is not sold but rather the performance it brings to the customers' processes in terms of added value. This changed business scenario insists on an integration of a service and a product perspectives in early design phases. However, the approaches to understand customers diverge. In this paper, a need matrix, from the economic theory of needs, and a requirement matrix, from the TRIZ methodology, are used to elaborate on integration aspects to understand customer statements. The comparison of these matrixes made the distinct logics apparent, and gave an indication for the necessity of another type of specification for PSS products. Also, the knowledge base for PSS methodologies has to be extended to encompass a part that visualizes non measurable aspects such as needs.

The emerging industrial business partnerships, which feature cross-functional and cross-company development efforts, raise the barrier for the establishment of effective knowledge sharing practices in the larger organization. This chapter aims to highlight the role of knowledge as a key enabler for effective engineering activities in the light of such emerging enterprise collaboration models. Knowledge Enabled Engineering (KEE) is presented as an approach to enhance the extended organization’s capability to establish effective collaboration among its parts, in spite of different organizational structures, technologies or processes. KEE is analysed in its constituent parts, highlighting areas, methods and tools that are particularly interesting for leveraging companies’ knowledge sharing capabilities.

This paper analyzes the knowledge sharing process that characterizes Product Service Systems (PSS) design, drawing on data from an in-depth study in the Swedish manufacturing industry. It categorizes and describes the most relevant knowledge sharing barriers affecting early PSS development phases, discussing them in terms of capabilities to be included in a knowledge engineering system to fulfil the increasing need for knowledge in product-service design. To cope with these barriers, the authors introduce the concept of Engineering 2.0, which borrows the general Web 2.0 concept and translates it into engineering terms, going into the details of how functional product development may benefit from the possibility to integrate bottom-up and "lightweight" knowledge sharing techniques with traditional PLM/PDM/CAD solutions, and highlighting the most relevant challenges for the Engineering 2.0 research.

The paper discusses the key enabling mechanisms introduced byWeb 2.0 technologies that can support Product Service Systems (PSSs)development teams in increasing the quality of early design decisions.The paper collects success stories and lessons learned from two empirical casestudies in the aeronautical supply chain, and from a set of questionnairesforwarded to major automotive manufacturers, about the implementation ofEngineering 2.0 tools, such as wikis, blogs and forums, to overcomeknowledge-sharing barriers between cross-functional design teams. The studyreveals that bottom-up and lightweight technologies can enable theimplementation of more value-driven development processes, providing meansfor locating expertise in the extended organisation, for capturing the ‘context’of the information managed, and for assessing and validating knowledge assetsin a more collaborative fashion. Eventually, it points to the most relevant issuesthat currently prevent the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in a productdevelopment setting.

The aim of the paper is to discuss the rising potential of social software to increase the knowledge management capabilities of virtual product development teams. It presents six fundamental transitions, elaborated from the empirical findings, which justify the rise of a more bottom-up, social creation and sharing of engineering knowledge in the virtual organisation. The study suggests that traditional engineering knowledge management approaches alone are not sufficient to support development activities in the virtual organisation, and that such teams display an increasing demand for social, comparatively lightweight and remixable platforms for bottom-up, social creation and sharing of knowledge.

In Product Service Systems development, understanding the customer use of goods is vital, since the product per se is not sold but rather the performance it brings to the purchaser in terms of added value. Moving away from offering just a product or service to become a provider of "integrated solutions" implies inevitable changes in the interaction with the customer as well as in the way knowledge is managed and shared in the cross company environment. The main aim of this paper is, on one hand, to provide examples of how Product-Service Systems raise the demand on such cross-functional knowledge sharing; on the other hand it aims to point out a set of requirements for the successful development of Knowledge Enabled Engineering systems able to support a PSS paradigm in a Virtual Enterprise context.

The paper proposes a framework for analysing the performances of product-service systems (PSSs) development processes using a balanced scorecard (BSC) as an instrument to guide the implementation and the evaluation of new methods and tools. Emerging from a case study in the aerospace industry, the paper discusses the main challenges in PSS development and proposes a performance measurement framework for PSS development based on multi-criteria indicators. Finally, the benefits of a framework for PSS development performance measurement are discussed.

Many companies have been using lessons learned practices as one oftheir key knowledge management initiatives to capitalize on past experiences.For product development companies, learning from product lifecycle phasesgives a true competitive advantage to improve the next generation of products.However, companies are still struggling in capturing and sharing lessonslearned and applying them in new situations. Based on this consideration, thepaper proposes a video-based approach–using social media technologies–as away to leverage continuous capturing and sharing lessons learned from productlifecycle phases to design practices. The paper presents the findings of a casestudy within the aerospace industry, which investigates the current industrialpractices with regard to experience feedback, and illustrates the implementationof a video-based approach. Further, the conceptual mock-up of video-based lessons learned sharing portal and its social platform that are aimed to support the design practices are illustrated.

Moving away from offering just physical artifacts to becoming providers of functional products, or Product-Service Systems (PSS), implies inevitable changes in the way engineering knowledge is identified and shared in a cross company environment. Capturing downstream knowledge assets and making them available to cross-functional teams becomes crucial to approach ill-defined problems in PSS design. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Web 2.0-based knowledge sharing technologies may be used to support the design of functional products. The article, drawing on data from several industrial development projects in various segments, introduces the concept of “lightweight technologies” as a means to lower the threshold related to the sharing of downstream engineering knowledge assets. The paper points out potential benefits and challenges related to the adoption of a lightweight approach and provides examples of how tools like wikis, blogs or social bookmarking may be used to support functional product engineers.

In light of emerging product development trends, such as Product-Service Systems, manufacturing organizations are obliged to collaborate across functional and organizational borders. Hence, companies are increasingly investigating how to leverage knowledge management practices to enhance their dynamic learning capabilities to achieve continuous process improvements. Manyresearchers assert that lessons learned practices are possible ways for organizational learning, which allows for continuous capturing and sharing of experiential knowledge across boundaries in order to learn both from mistakes and successes. However, many organizations fall short in capturing and sharing lessons from projects and applying them in new situations. The purpose of this paper is to propose a video-based approach and related guidelines for capturing and sharing lessons learned in a dynamic manner across functional and organizational boundaries. Based on laboratory experiments as well as validation activities conducted in collaboration with an aerospace manufacturer, this papercompares the video-based approach with a more traditional text-based approach of documenting lessons learned from projects. The paper describes the results of testing activities conducted with a video-based lessons learned prototype and the authors reflect on its implications for design practice management in the aerospace industry.

In recent years there has been a growing interest among product development organizations to capitalize on engineering knowledge as their core competitive advantage for innovation. Capturing, storing, retrieval, sharing and reusing of engineering knowledge from a wide range of enterprise memory systems have become crucial activities of knowledge management practice in competitive organizations. In light of a changing and dynamic enterprise definition, including a move towards Product-Service System (PSS) development, this paper discusses some of the limitations of current enterprise systems in reusing engineering knowledge across functional and corporate boundaries. Further, the paper illustrates how Web 2.0-based collaborative technologies can leverage cross-functional knowledge for new PSS development projects through an open, bottom-up, and collective sense-making approach to knowledge management.

Current systems engineering (SE) standards do not address 'Value' in much detail. Yet, understanding what drives the generation of stakeholder value in a given business context, is fundamental to promoting a common and clear vision throughout the extended enterprise, of what should be the focus of their early, conceptual work at all levels of development. This paper presents a Value-Driven Design (VDD) methodology designed to strengthen the value and requirements maturation process within an extended enterprise setting. The work presented is the result of a three and a half year European program (CRESCENDO) within the aerospace sector. The VDD methodology is introduced and explained in an industrial aircraft development context and a selection of enabling methods and tools associated to the VDD methodology is presented

Total Offers, Functional Products, and Integrated Product Service Engineering reflect a shift toward service offers from manufacturing industry captured within the term Product-Service Systems (PSS). Manufacturing companies have traditionally focused design and development activities on realizing technical and engineered aspects of physical artifacts, while PSS include deeper understanding of customers’ expectation, needs and perceived value, hence calling for modelling of additional aspects. The change in early design processes and the effects on virtual modelling of product properties are discussed in this paper through aerospace industry examples to clarify ‘parameters of change’, giving suggestions for a simulation driven design (SDD) approach.

Streamlining new product development forces companies to make decisions on preliminary information. This paper considers this challenge within the context of project management in the aerospace sector, and in particular the development of product-service systems. The concept of knowledge maturity is explored as a means to provide practical decision support, which increases decision makers' awareness of the knowledge base and supports cross-boundary discussions on the perceived maturity of available knowledge, thereby identifying and mitigating limitations. Requirements are elicited from previous research on knowledge maturity in the aerospace industry and a knowledge maturity model is developed through five industry-based workshops.

In manufacturing, metal parts can be joined using a laser as a welding tool, i.e. laser welding. Despite huge amount of research over the years, the process is neither sufficiently understood nor mathematically predictable. This study aims to holistically analyze the knowledge management issues occurring in laser welding. Emerging from observations and semi-structured interviews from industry and academy, the complexity and the criticalities of the process as well as the current knowledge transfers is explained and analyzed, using a knowledge lifecycle framework as a reference. Besides enhanced awareness of the limiting issues, information and knowledge visualization, e.g. knowledge maps, is identified as a key for progress in the community. The Matrix Flow Chart is suggested as an alternative descaled map of process changes.

In a traditional business partnership, the partner companies are under contractual obligation to share data, information, and knowledge through one or several information systems that the leading firm decides. In such a case, the issue of sharing "whatever needs to be shared" is settled in contracts before any action is taken, however, also giving the implications that sharing expertise becomes a heavy and time-consuming activity. In turn, it can be argued that the heavy administration affects the lead time of product development negatively since the necessary input flows are delayed. In addition, the adaptation to certain predefined collaborative information systems is both expensive and resource-consuming (e.g., educating staff to use them). Also, the system might not be adaptable to the existing internal technology structure, causing a "translation" procedure, again taking up resources. Another structure for collaboration is a network or alliance of independent partner companies. One motivation for a network structure is that the partners can join or leave it more easily. A reason for joining and staying is an implicit sense of knowledge sharing (Tomkins 2001) and access to a "win-win" environment. Furthermore, the partners can be linked by information technology, i.e., forming a virtual ­structure rather than a physical one. The technologies provide the channels with additional knowledge. In a best-case scenario, a company would get access to a wide range of useful competences, and in a worst-case scenario the company would be drained of its core competences. Accordingly, at least two considerations for joining a partner network can be considered. First, the resources needed to couple the technologies have to be reasonable, due to the underpinning logic of going in and out of more than one network. Second, the company has to identify its knowledge base and evaluate the prospective gains and losses of sharing its expertise.

The IMG4 project CRESCENDO addresses the Vision 2020 objectives for the aeronautical industry by contributing significantly to the fulfilment of three specific targets of the aeronautical industry’s Strategic Research Agenda. CRESCENDO will develop the foundations for the Behavioural Digital Aircraft (BDA),taking experience and results from VIVACE, and integrating these into a federative system and building the BDA on top of them. Main components of the BDA are: the Model Store, the Simulation Factory, the Quality Laboratory, and the Enterprise Collaboration Capabilities. It will be validated through use cases and test cases concerning “Power Plant Integration”, “Energy Aircraft”, “Thermal Aircraft” and “Value Generation” design problems and viewpoints during the preliminary design, detailed design, and test and certification phases of a generic aircraft product life-cycle. The BDA will become the new backbone for the simulation world, just as the Digital Mock-up (DMU) is today for the Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) world. This is considered a challenging area for research and innovation for the next decade. Hence, the CRESCENDO results will provide the aeronautics supply chain with the means to realistically manage and mature the virtual product in the extended/virtual enterprise with all of the requested functionality and components in each phase of the product engineering life cycle. CRESCENDO will make its approach available to the aeronautics supply chain via existing networks, information dissemination, training and technology transfer actions. The project will last three years and be organised into six subprojects: four technical and business-oriented subprojects, one “Enabling Capabilities” subproject which will deliver the BDA and a sixth subproject, responsible for consortium management and innovation issues. CRESCENDO will bring together 59 partners from industry, research institutes, universities and technology providers

Begreppet product-service systems (PSS), eller funktionella produkter, förutspås ha betydande påverkan för ett framtida hållbart samhälle. Ett PSS-synsätt kommer att förändra hur produkter och tjänster används, men också förändra tillvägagångssättet i utvecklingen, eftersom ansvaret för den fysiska produkten genom hela dess livscykel kvarstår hos företaget eller konsortiet som utvecklar PSS-lösningen. I och med detta kan aktiviteterna med omkonstruktion, återanvändning och återvinning, utföras på ett totalt annorlunda sätt än i dag. I den här situationen blir kapaciteten att ständigt förbättra kundupplevt värde genom nya lösningar en viktig förmåga. Således står utvecklingsteam idag inför två stora utmaningar; dels ska de kunna hantera mer abstrakta kundbehov, dels ska de på ett effektivt sätt ständigt bidra till nya lösningar. Det här projektets mål är att stödja PSS-utvecklingsteamets innovationsprocess genom att föreslå faciliterande metoder och verktyg. Specifikt fokus ligger på följande aspekter för att bidra till utvecklingen av en sammanhängande metodologi för team-baserad innovation:- Identifiering, analys och kommunikation av kundbehov samt modellering av värde- Tvärfunktionella team- Effektiv kunskapsdelning- Modellering och visualisering av lösningar baserat på ett kunskapslivscykel perspektiv Projektet kommer att vara en gemensam prestation av industri- och akademirepresentanter. Det praktiska arbetet kommer att utföras i ett nära samarbete. I stort vägleds projektet av antagandet att – visualisering av affärs- och utvecklingsrelaterad kunskap samt snabba modellerings- och simuleringsmöjligheter i tidiga faser stödjer PSS-teamets förmåga att finna nya lösningar och genomföra hållbar utveckling. Förutom ökad kunskap om strategier och tillvägagångssätt för team-baserad innovation kommer demonstratorer av verktyg och metoder vara ett resultat av projektarbetet.

Social media are becoming an increasingly relevant channel for user involvement. However, their uptake in Living Labs environments, as a means to engage users in innovation processes, is still limited. The aim of this paper is to explore challenges and opportunities related to the usage of social media for user involvement in co-creative processes, The findings presented emerge both from the available literature and case studies, and emphasise four different dimensions influencing user engagement: facilitator, community, platform and innovation process. Based on these dimensions, the authors propose a basic framework, intended as the point of departure for taking the next step toward the construction and verification of theoretical constructs that can help inform and guide future innovation projects.