Symbol systems can provide topic-specific languages comprising multimodal grammars and vocabularies. Symbol systems can facilitate mutual knowledge for innovation when people do not already have a common language for effective communication about an innovation. For example, there can be a lack of common language among diverse participants at public co-creation workshops: especially when different participants have different perspectives about the same hyped innovation. In this paper, action research is reported, which involved the development of a multimodal symbol system for facilitating mutual innovation knowledge. Overall, this paper provides two principal contributions to the literature. First, criteria for topic-specific symbol systems are set-out with reference to relevant literature. Second, a practical example of a multimodal symbol system, which meets these criteria, is presented. Together, these contributions introduce new directions for research and practice concerned with facilitating mutual innovation knowledge.

符号系统可以提供特定主题的语言，包括多模式语法和词汇。当人们还没有用于创新的有效交流的通用语言时，符号系统可以促进创新的共同知识。例如，在公共共创研讨会上，不同参与者之间可能缺乏共同语言：尤其是当不同的参与者对同一个大肆宣传的创新有不同的看法时。本文报道了行动研究，其中涉及促进相互创新知识的多模式符号系统的开发。总体而言，本文为文献提供了两个主要贡献。首先，参考相关文献提出针对特定主题的符号系统的标准。第二，多模式符号系统的实际示例，满足这些条件的介绍。这些贡献共同为促进相互创新知识的研究和实践提供了新的方向。