Abstract This paper deals with the story and experiences of setting up a new start-up company with the ambition to scale using a software-based product. The paper is written by researchers for researchers interested in doing the same thing. The paper concludes that it can be very beneficial for research as the startup-can be seen as a data collection machine, but to set up a start-up company, comes with unforeseen problems along the way. A few of them involves: Do not rely on rational arguments (only), when marketing your product. Expect long lead-times. Work with multiple threads and secure funding early to ensure that you can finance your startup. Finally, you need to be committed, and you have to have a strategy to manage both your research and your commercial activities.

In this study, we have brought several knowledge management theories and practices together and have investigated the valuable aspects in each one of them. Throughout our research, we have enabled knowledge reuse to be a guiding principle and have attempted to formulate an improved method for documenting knowledge. The focus has been to create actionable and reusable knowledge presented at the right time, to the right audience in a digitally condensed format that may hopefully will lead to improved decision-making, thereby potentially driving innovation and effectively reducing overall product realization lead-time. We have explored the effect of the Engineering Checksheet concept in two separate case studies where it was implemented in a real-life setting. The concept showed positive results as a knowledge carrier both for reuse by experienced and novice users.

This paper presents an educational game fostering a new experience-based approach to teaching knowledge transfer using a codification strategy alone. The goal is to address and highlight some common issues and challenges that occur during knowledge transfer in product development and that are often difficult for especially students to grasp through exclusively a theoretical teaching approach. The game is introduced to 60 students in the final year of their Master's curriculum. In parallel, the game has been applied in a similar setting in a comparable higher educational institution, as well as in a product development organization.“Sometimes you win—other times you lose and learn.”

In multi-domain product development organizations, there is a continuous need to transfer captured knowledge between engineers to enable better design decisions in the future. The objective of this paper is to evaluate how engineering knowledge can be captured, disseminated and (re)used by applying a knowledge reuse tool entitled Engineering Checksheet (ECS). The tool was introduced in 2012 and this evaluation has been performed over the 2017–2018 period. This case study focused on codified knowledge in incremental product development with a high reuse potential both in and over time. The evaluation draws conclusions from the perspectives of the knowledge workers (the engineers), knowledge owners and knowledge managers. The study concludes that the ECS has been found to be valuable in enabling a timely understanding of technological concepts related to low level engineering tasks in the product development process. Hence, this enables knowledge flow and, in particular, reuse among inexperienced engineers, as well as providing quick and accurate quality control for experienced engineers. The findings regarding knowledge ownership and management relate to the need for clearly defining a knowledge owner structure in which communities of practice take responsibility for empowering engineers to use ECS and as knowledge evolves managing updates to the ECS.