Assisting R&D activities definition through problem mapping

Problem formulation and problem solving has always been identified as a key activity in design, moreover in the context of innovation. Nevertheless, few research findings have led to a practical use in enterprises since a large part of today's industrial world is still under cost reduction and quality maintenance concerns. This paper has the aim of presenting the theoretical grounding of a new problem-oriented approach and the way we translated it into generic techniques through a simple and didactic example. A discussion section summarizes actual statement, advantages and limitation of our approach so as further research orientations.