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This paper aims to present an analysis between teams' co-location and project performance. In order to achieve product development project success many decisions shall be made before the project kick-off. One of these decisions is to whether co-locate or not the project team. But, what are the effects of teams' co-location on project performance? The paper provides a literature review about teams' co-location, its advantages and disadvantages, virtual teams and project performance parameters. A table is then proposed to be used as a guide to determine the degree of success of projects. This paper also presents a case study where 3 pairs of similar New Product Development (NPD) projects were analyzed. In each pair of cases, the first NPD occurred using a co-located team and, in the second case, a virtual team (not co-located team) was adopted. The project performance parameters for each case were identified using the proposed table from which we concluded that co-located teams appears to deliver better performance at least in the "internal project efficiency" parameters. Further research involving a larger sample of cases is still necessary to confirm these conclusions.

Open innovation is one of the strategies employed by enterprises to optimize innovation processes through the establishment of partnerships in technology development. Despite the importance of open innovation, there have been few studies on application cases or studies that identify practices and tools supporting this strategy. This study firstly aimed at analyzing reference models used in technology development processes (TDP) from the literature. This showed that TDP reference models only superficially address the establishment of partnerships in innovation processes. Then, a similar analysis was carried out with a large enterprise belonging to the aeronautical sector. This analysis identified the company's level of adequacy to open innovation, the benefits and the difficulties resulting from its use. This analysis showed that the enterprise is changing the process of TDP according to open innovation and through two practices of interest: the structuring of teams according to technology maturity and the strategic guidance for encouraging the adoption of partnership in these projects. In addition to new practices, the study identifies challenges for the management of innovation, as the adoption of systematic analysis of partnerships and their impact throughout the TDP, and suggestions for future research.

This article presents and discusses a set of lessons learned by a large industry in the Brazilian aerospace sector on the planning and execution of high risk, high-technology content innovation projects (technology development) in partnership with academic institutions. It summarizes the key points that the project managers involved in this study regarded as crucial to the successful planning and execution of this particular type of project. Even though most of the points discussed in the article are already covered in the present body of literature on project management, these contributions are too general in their approaches and do not take proper consideration of the specific aspects or characteristics of the projects that are the focus of this study. It is suggested that the lessons discussed in the article, in spite of being based on a research carried out in just one company, be used as a reference not only by other engaged companies that need to generate practical results for projects being executed in partnership with academia, but also for researchers interested in advanced studies in the area of project management.

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