Innovative Product and Network of Partners Co-design: Context, Problems, and Some Exploratory Results

Innovative product development and in-house process design have been largely studied and methods, such as concurrent engineering, integrated product development, or dynamic product development are set up to answer real needs of industrialists. However, no innovative product can be put on the market without a well-structured and well-organized network of partners. This simple idea deeply influences various aspects of collaborative enterprises. This article studies the close relationship between two parallel design processes: product design and network design. This paradigm called co-design is explained and some basic concepts and exploratory results are defined.