In today’s globalized landscape, product engineering teams are increasingly composed of engineers with diverse nationalities. Multinational companies, with operations spread across various countries, naturally form multinational engineering teams. Similarly, national companies often recruit globally due to local skill shortages, cost-effectiveness, or the need to offer flexible work locations to attract top talent. Global competition has also driven companies to operate in distributed settings, making multinational composition in product engineering teams the norm rather than the exception. A significant aspect of modern product engineering teams is their distributed nature. Team members frequently work from different countries, facilitated by new home office regulations and advancements in information and communication technologies (ICT). While this distributed setting offers numerous advantages, it also presents unique challenges, particularly in problem-solving processes that require creativity. ICT-mediated communication often lacks the richness of face-to-face interactions, leading to potential misunderstandings and missed indirect communication signals. This is especially critical in creative processes, where clear communication is necessary to convey new ideas effectively. The objective of this study is to apply and validate a support method targeted at helping intercultural distributed product engineering teams improve their creative problem-solving. The method used is the Cultural Synergy Spectrum (CSS) Method. The method is applied in an industry team working on an actual problem the team was facing. The learnings include insights on the necessary knowledge for a moderator of the CSS method, the situation and specific adaption of the method, and the limitations encountered with a method that was developed in a theoretical research environment and is brought to real-life application.

By addressing these questions, the study seeks to enhance the creative problem-solving capabilities of intercultural distributed engineering teams, thereby contributing to more effective and innovative product development in a globalized context.