There are various players including universities, research centers, technology-based firms with different science and technology capabilities in development process of complex product systems. One of the main challenges of these projects is converging among science and technology capabilities of the players. In order to address the problem, a single case study about the design phase of an Iranian regional jet aircraft was selected.
To collect data, we made some deep interviews with 18 experts including some project executives, some managers of supreme council of science and technology, some academic and industry experts. Also we used published documents and researchers’ observations. According to the research conceptual framework, the process of convergence among science and technology capabilities of the players was analyzed from three viewpoints including convergence mechanisms, organizational capabilities of integrator and players relationships. We investigated seven challenges occurred in the project and the eleven selected tools to solve them.
One of the main outcomes of this research was deepening researchers and managers’ understanding about making convergence in CoPS projects. The main findings of the article were the need to use various convergence tools based on different stages of a CoPS project improvement, and the uniqueness of convergence tools in these projects.