The relationship between information and personal knowledge in new product development

The importance and reliance that engineering designers make upon knowledge as an information source, within the development of new products, is known to be of great importance, The paper presents a detailed discussion on the relationship between information, knowledge and memory in order to establish a set of definitions and meanings of these terms. The importance of communication within this process will also be discussed. The paper will then establish how engineering designers use their personal knowledge and in particular, their memory whilst undertaking a variety of design tasks. This work is based upon 20 empirical case studies of engineering designers working within their normal design environment. Issues for future research are then presented. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.