Research collaborations produce a great volume of data, which must be sifted for valuable information. Knowledge gleaned from this data must be organized and made available for future use. 
Literature review and case study.
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Research-based scholarly publications rarely include information that itemizes associated costs and benefits, or facilitates planning and budgeting. Other common absences of information include implementation-related factors such as the availability of practice guidelines, staffing requirements, educational prerequisites, training needs, and performance life-cycles. Researchers often have many of the answers, but journals rarely consider the information to be within their scope of coverage.
Literature review and professional reflections.
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Winning grants creates a “virtuous cycle” of better research, higher-prestige publications, and more notoriety. An improved reputation attracts better scientists and more support.
Non-experimental study
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Incubators often tout networking as a major attribute because social networks are informal and valuable relationships which take time and positioning to build.  
Case study findings
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Companies that could benefit from an early-stage empirical analysis should create a new, separate organization focused on truth seeking — or outsource this function to qualified academic researchers. A small team manages the operation, recruiting both internal and external staff and consultants with expertise and objectivity. The teams design critical experiments to rule in or rule out a product's key attributes. Teams should be small and fluid comprised of persons motivated by intellectual curiosity. No one follows any of the projects into the later NPD stages to maintain their objectivity.
Private sector experience in pharmaceutical industry.
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Knowledge Creation Cycle is depicted as having three generations descending through a funnel, to represent how knowledge is sifted and filtered so that only the most useful knowledge is left for application. First generation knowledge is that created through research activity or through experiential activity. Second generation knowledge results from a process for the identification, appraisal and synthesis of studies or information related to a specific question. Third generation knowledge is embodied in summaries, practice guidelines and decision aids, where the knowledge is available in formats that meet the needs of targeted stakeholder groups.
Summary of the Knowledge to Action Model and its application to knowledge translation.
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The range of participants in R&D is broad and requires someone to oversee the integration of all the elements that constitute the innovation process. All of the external actors that create value or knowledge may join in R&D, including customers, suppliers and distributors, with all due consideration of the span of control and confidentiality issues.
Author analysis of prior literature and application within an industrial setting.
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Voice of the Customer Information as a Best Practice for the NPD process: 1) Market and buyer behavior studies are a valuable source of information for planning the market launch. 2) Market research as a tool to help define the product. 3) The customer or user ought to be an integral part of the Development process. 4) Identification of customers or users real or un-articulated needs and their problems, is considered fundamental to voice-of-the-customer research, and should be a key input to product design. 5) Working with highly innovative users or customers.
A quantitative survey of 105 business units, supported by team's experience in NPD modeling, consultation, application and analysis.
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When it is critical to identify barriers to market success early in the NPD process, proof of concept testing may be outsourced to external experts who advise on experimental designs, and external vendors who can advise on manufacturing, potential hazards and specialized services. Such outsourcing reinforces truth-seeking by injecting dispassionate outside perspectives. This also frees internal experts to focus on the analysis of the evidence generated by the external experiments.
Private sector experience in pharmaceutical industry.
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Customer interaction enhances the NPD process most at the early and and late stages of product design and development. The middle stage of prototyping and bench testing should be left to the internal project staff, while customers can be kept abreast of this interim progress to keep them current. A deficit in current business practice is particularly evident in the early stages of NPD.
Field interviews and 310 survey responses from R&D managers.
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Knowledge Producers can facilitate the uptake of their research by addressing five questions: 1) What should be disseminated? 2) To whom should it be disseminated? 3) By whom should it be disseminated? 4) How should it be disseminated? 5) With what effect should it be disseminated?
Source: Lavis, J et at (2003). In: Graham, I.D., Logan, J., Harrison, M.B., Straus, S.E., Tetroe J., Caswell, W. et. al. (2006)

To mitigate power inequalities and transcend the different cognitive and cultural worlds of participating stakeholders, an independent facilitator should guide the process and fulfill an intermediary role as a knowledge broker.
Source: Sperling & Ashby (2001); Hargadon (2002). In: Klerkx, Laurens & Leeuwis, Cees (2007)

For demand articulation, dialogue between end-users and producers of knowledge and information, as well as other relevant stakeholders, should take place throughout the innovation process.
Source: Douthwaite et al (2001). In: Klerkx, Laurens & Leeuwis, Cees (2007)

Some areas of innovation lend themselves better to participatory development than others, and different types of innovation (incremental vs. radical) call for particular competences on the part of participating end users.
Source: Sumberg et al (2003); Lettl (2007). In: Klerkx, Laurens & Leeuwis, Cees (2007)