To manage global innovation firms organize their global R&D footprint all around the world to optimize knowledge access. This has lead to distributed design teams around the world. It is the case of Alstom Renewable Hydro Power where this research has been conducted. Hydro business designs turbines and generators that entails different types of objectives that can be: standardization of engineering processes, development of common design guides for engineering tools, harmonization of quality sheets and troubleshooting procedures. Hydro has entrusted these objectives to distributed engineering collectives. Most of these collectives are supported by ICT tools and qualified as design communities, virtual teams and networks of experts inside the company. Our research aims to clearly define the design choice of a virtual engineering collective type for a specific objective related to knowledge creation or knowledge exchange. This paper's objectives are to define, to characterize and to differentiate every virtual engineering collective. Our finding is a virtual collective framework that is composed of 7 critical differentiator factors that will characterize these virtual collectives.