This thesis is concerned with organizing product development in the setting of established manufacturing firms. Product development practices have undergone major changes during the past decade.
Companies increasingly see product development as a key tool for competitiveness.
As a result of this trend the amount of reciprocal task interdependencies to be operatively considered has increased. These interdependencies span over different types of organizational and technical boundaries, constituting an intricate organizing problem. Existing views of organizing have basically urged for more planning of tasks, prior to their execution, in order to reduce interdependencies and unanticipated problems. This thesis, on the contrary, argues that a more dynamic organizing approach is advantageous, because it can stimulate knowledge creation throughout the process. Operative organizing principles based upon such an approach are scarce, and the overall purpose of this research has been to develop such principles for product development.