In a worldwide context of collaborative development of new products and/or services, companies have to control the design process to increase design performance. Formal and informal networks of actors are activated during the very first phases of product development projects in order to define the company's partners in a more efficient way. Our goal is to study relationships between co-design projects and networks of partners in order to help project managers in setting up design teams. This leads to the identification of several drivers which influence the actors' network use and leading. Drivers such as project organisational structure, concurrent engineering techniques, groupware-like and knowledge-based systems support and enhance such networks. We will base our experimental issues on an industrial case study from energy production sector. This industrial case explores the structure and the management of actors' networks.

Computer-Aided Innovation (CAI) has proven useful for creative problem solving, particularly when faced with opposing restrictions. The work presented is faced with such restrictions in terms of solar tracking concentrators. The targeted low cost regarding the tracking system is opposed to the need of a constant precise and controlled movement. The literature revised will be discussed and then areas of opportunity found. The proposal involved the use of computer simulation for concept selection and validation trough a ray-trace method and mathematical models interrelationship for minimizing movement of a solar tracking concentrator. Trace Pro software from Lambda Research is used for ray-trace simulation. This method consists on the projection of a large number of rays over the optical system, and even by reflection or refraction, system's efficiency can be determined. In the end, an optimal solution is found depending on the conditions considered and conceptual designs are proposed.