The Role of Boundary Crossing for Knowledge Advancement in Product Development

We present an empirical analysis of workplace learning using concepts from Activity Theory. The overall aim is to understand the evolution of a shared artifact in the boundary zone between a commercial organization (company) and its Customers, on one hand, and between the company and a group of researchers on the other. The shared artifact is a project planning tool suite developed for Customers by the company. We have identified three boundary-crossing activities: product development, user participation, and researchers' intervention and discuss their contributions to knowledge advancement on the basis of two identified contradictions. The interaction between developers and customers identifies a contradiction in adaptive product development, and the interaction between developers and researchers identifies a contradiction in Use of a CRM system. We use data excerpts from a video-recorded interview and a design workshop to analyze Our findings.