Design expertise in three different collaborative practices

The work field of designers is changing drastically. A designer is not only a creator of products and technical artifacts, moreover he is an entrepreneurial designer who inspires and enables business innovation on a strategic level. The essence of design is the creation of a vision about tomorrow's world with all its aspects. Important here is that all different aspects need to become connected via collaboration with many different stakeholders. Only if this is done successfully, value for all stakeholders is created and the innovation will become a success. This makes collaboration a crucial aspect of today's innovations. Since we do not have much knowledge about the nature of this collaboration, we questioned in this paper if we could specify and identify design collaboration. We interviewed 33 practitioners in various fields about the application of their design expertise. We found three different collaborative practices with their own identity because they differ with respect to their knowledge sharing and - integrating processes and because design expertise is used differently.