Crowd engineering – Community-driven product development: Innovating product development by integration of communities

A shortage of skilled workers, ever shorter product life cycles and the increasing demand for customer-specific products result in increasing challenges for development departments of manufacturing companies. The integration of external experts in product development is a promising approach for faster, more cost-effective and more demand-oriented product development. With Crowd Engineering, the integration of a community into product development is realised. This article aims to give an insight into the current state of research in Crowd Engineering and to demonstrate the benefits for companies. © Carl Hanser Verlag, München.