While partnerships between academia and industry are recognised as potential mechanisms for improved sector agility and competitive advantage, engagement in collaborative activity can be challenging. The translation of ideological paradigms and the application of practices inherent within each discipline can hinder the creation of new knowledge. However, it is recognised that collaboration in this context is increasingly important to both industry, for economic value, and academia for impact outside research.

This paper introduces produced design space as a situated context within collaborative activity and as being critical to open innovation practices, bringing together juxtaposed partners to co-create in a reciprocal and meaningful way. Produced design space is articulated as space that is enabled, created and facilitated to encourage collaboration between multidisciplinary partners, as opposed to the space of traditionally collaboration.

This study first introduces the spatial triad of Lefebvre: physical, mental and lived, applying his theoretical framework in order to explore the current understanding of produced design space from both a theoretical and practice based context, supported by evidence gathered during a series of multidisciplinary collaborative design workshops illustrating the theoretical considerations in practice.