A novel design education approach for professional global product realization

Emerging trends in design practice, such as collaborative design and multi-national,
multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary (multi-x) teamwork, call for ongoing changes in
design education. Educational institutions need to be proactive in adapting to such
trends, in order to ensure an adequate development of the design competences of their
students. The graduated design students must be able to effectively solve real-life new
product development (NPD) problems in multi-x environments. In this paper we present
a novel approach towards design education, where special focus is put on multi-x
collaboration of design students in solving NPD tasks. We present the idea of an
Academic Virtual Enterprise (AVE), a project oriented educational agreement, which is
based on volatile alliance of industrial and academic partners for mutual advantages. A
course, called Global Product Realization (GPR) is presented as an example of how to
implement AVE into design education and provide a stimulating learning environment
for students in several disciplines (i.e. mechanical engineering, programming,
electronics, design, etc.), where they can get experience in multi-x collaboration in NPD
and develop several aspects of design competences needed for their future professional
practice.