Significant research on R&D project evaluation methods is feasible when we have clear data and conditions for measurement. In university projects, it is unwise to use directly the reference points and practices of industrial or independent labs. As a result, the method and the model introduced in this paper are adapted to find the most informative success factors for engineering R&D projects when the non-professional project manager’s experience is the primary source of data. The model was developed using knowledge acquisition (KA), while 21 projects within the same domain were recorded in the knowledge base through semi-structured interviews with experienced project managers during a fine-tuning process. The contribution of this paper is the logical rules and the attributes by which we can understand the project managers’ mindset in R&D projects of a higher education institutions. The paper includes an evaluation of the projects as a case study.

The Digital Age has brought not only new tools but also several new methods. A Collaborative Knowledge Platform with a hybrid intelligent system may be the appropriate base of a knowledge management system to ensure inspiration and new knowledge for a professional group of individuals. The introduced concept contributes to Knowledge Collaboration and Knowledge Engineering. The method is a special form of Knowledge Engineering which involves combining machine learning algorithms with cased-based reasoning and the result is the transformation of personal knowledge to widely adaptable explicit knowledge. Individuals can learn informally while their learning route automatically generates data for reductive reasoning process, which finally leads to the opportunity of experience mining. A concept and an approach are suggested to improve the knowledge collaboration in innovative communities, and a creative problem solving process delivers the outcome in the development of a Knowledge Management System. Finally, some partial results of the design phase of an application are presented.