Product Development is essentially a knowledge creation process. Thus, one factor for the successful leverage of this process is knowledge sharing and an important way to perform this is by creating communities of practice to improve knowledge. This paper aims to present the creation of a community of practice in product development, emphasizing the collaboration process and knowledge sharing initiatives among research groups. This experience is based on a real community in Brazil that initially was composed of many product development. research groups. The community of practice, called PDPNet (Product Development Process Network), uses a knowledge management portal to facilitate member interaction, knowledge sharing and exchange for the generation of new knowledge. The paper presents some possibilities for the use of this tool in order to improve collaborative product development and the relationships involved.