This book focuses on the interrelationship of social, technical, and organizational aspects of and related to the product development process. It originated from activities in practice in industry and research laboratories. In order to ensure relative autonomy from the short-term economic interests of a given industrial branch or specific company, the research for this work was first conducted in pursuit of a PhD thesis intended to provide practice-oriented results. With the ansatz practice - theory - practice, a generalizable approach was achieved. It then evolved to cover additional issues...