Expanding the Social Dimension: towards a Knowledge Base for Product-service Innovation

The extension of businesses to incorporate the provision of function as a service in supplement to standalone products is an ongoing movement in manufacturing industry. In short, this means that the development intent should be guided by the need of ‘performance in use’ that the customer wants, e.g. thrust rather than an engine. By this, the established knowledge base challenges the development team. This paper embarks from the assumption that there are three main challenges, i.e. (1) innovation activities, (2) customer data acquisition and (3) the transformation of data into design information. The purpose is to discuss knowledge sharing activities to contribute to product-service innovation. In this study it has been found that contemporary data acquisition activities filter out important dimensions of knowledge. Thus, does not provide a sound base for service provisions.