Research-Technology Management • March—April 2013 | 45 In today’s competitive business environment, companies are pressured to offer product-service combinations to sat- isfy increasingly sophisticated customer needs. Product- service systems (PSS) are the manifestation of a business model in which manufacturers offer integrated product- service combinations to customers while retaining owner- ship of the product and responsibility for it (Baines et al. 2007). The TotalCare package offered by aircraft engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce is an example of this emerging paradigm (Harrison 2006); the package offers customers a long-term business agreement that shifts the focus from the selling of physical engines to the provision of power. From a developmental perspective, PSS bring new chal- lenges for product development teams. Focusing on the artifact’s physical characteristics is no longer sufficient; rather, the design team has to carefully determine and balance the properties governing product behaviors across the entire product life cycle (Isaksson, Larsson, and Rönnbäck 2009). A typical aircraft engine, for instance, comprises thousands of parts and has an expected lifespan of 30 to 40 years, all of which must be taken into account in designing a product- service system. This process calls for new competencies and capabilities that are not exclusively part of the engineering design team but are rather owned by several actors in the supply chain. Hence, development teams must manage their knowledge and experiences in a “shared context” (Nonaka, Toyama, and Konno 2000) across functional and organizational boundaries to deliver the desired result throughout the lifespan of the product. Knowledge sharing across supply-chain actors is, therefore, a key enabler for successful PSS innovation (Harrison 2006). To describe this phenomenon, the author explored knowledge-sharing networks for PSS innovation in the aerospace sector, which has pioneered PSS-oriented strate- gies and multinational collaborations across several com- panies. A case study in the aerospace supply chain provided insight into how companies are using knowledge-man- agement systems and Web 2.0 tools in their regular Koteshwar Chirumalla is a PhD student in product innovation at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. His research interests include Web 2.0 and social media, product development, product-service systems, knowl- edge lifecycle management, lessons-learned systems, and experience shar- ing. He holds MSc degrees in both production engineering management and materials processing from the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. He was involved in the Faste Laboratory, a VINN Excellence Center aiming to develop new methods and tools for enabling functional product innovation. The main purpose of his research is to develop Web 2.0-based social tech- nologies that can support the early stages of product innovation projects by enabling the capture and sharing of experience across the phases of the product life cycle. koteshwar.chirumalla@ltu.se DOI: 10.5437/08956308X5602045 FEATURE ARTICLE Managing Knowledge for Product-Service System Innovation The Role of Web 2.0 Technologies Web 2.0 tools can lower barriers to sharing unstructured knowledge, contextualized information, and networks of connections, as well as facilitating the collective creation of knowledge. Koteshwar Chirumalla OVERVIEW: In the emerging service economy, many traditional product manufacturing companies are seeking innovative ways to do business, focusing on product-service combinations. Development of these offerings requires the integration of a wider span of expertise from several companies, which poses new challenges in the way knowledge is captured and man- aged. On the basis of a case study from an aerospace supply chain, this paper first identifies the limitations of current knowledge-management systems in such a setting and then discusses the role of Web 2.0 technologies in managing knowl- edge across the knowledge life cycle. Web 2.0 technologies have potential to lower barriers to leveraging informal and unstructured knowledge, contextualized information, networks of connections, and collective creation and maintenance of knowledge assets, which could complement current knowledge-management systems in multicompany product devel- opment efforts. KEYWORDS: Knowledge management, Web 2.0, Product-service systems, Knowledge life cycle