Managing interdisciplinary collaboration in product-service systems engineering: insights from a mixed-method analysis of a student project

In recent years, a growing number of companies recognised that a large proportion of customers neglect the "classic" purchase of products and, instead, favour the acquisition of functions or solutions. As a result, multiple companies offer a mix of products and services designed to provide individual solutions. However, due to the complexity of integrated bundles of products and services, new approaches for developing such systems are required and a framework for companies for an efficient interdisciplinary collaboration is needed. By observing and analysing an interdisciplinary student project in which a product-service system was developed, insights regarding interdisciplinary work are obtained and guidelines for collaboration are derived. The results will serve as a basis for organising collaboration in other interdisciplinary projects. In order to obtain knowledge about relevant factors in the development of product-service systems, various methods of empirically quantitative and qualitative research were selected and integrated within a mixed method approach.