A B S T R A C T Climate change impacts lead to risks for natural and human systems. Climate sensitive decision-making in companies is vital to addressing the urgent need for making societies resilient to climate change and entailed risks. Providing and using state-of-the-art scientific knowledge in decision-making, an integral aspect of climate services, poses great challenges for climate scientists and decision-makers. This article aims to contribute to more informed decision-making processes

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... n climate adaptation by addressing the question "How can climate scientists practically implement a transdisciplinary (TD) collaboration with an industry partner to reduce the gap between climate science and decision-making in industry?". We present an engagement framework that provides guidance to address this question. This framework conceptualizes the engagement using two spheres of interests offering the opportunity to explore and widen their overlap as a common space. We present a case study where we apply this framework to a TD collaboration for climate service provision with a Swiss hydropower industry stakeholder; leading to four practical recommendations for effectively using the proposed framework: (1) Secure an anchor person at management level of the decision-maker entity, (2) Be prepared to invest time into triggering and maintaining active engagement by all collaborators, (3) From the start, communicate the open nature of insights and solutions from the engagement process, (4) Be aware that you are working in a field of tension. The presented engagement framework and practical recommendations are particularly beneficial for climate scientists that are not yet familiar with TD collaborations and enables co-development of bespoke climate services. Practical Implications Climate services aim to make climate information more accessible and useful for decision-makers, however, a usability gap persists. Active engagement of climate scientists and decision-makers, in collaborations, has gained increasing importance for climate services in reducing this gap, yet it is not clear how to approach such collaborations: how can climate scientists inform their research with decision-makers' needs, and how can de-ci-sion-makers learn how climate information is relevant for their strategic long-term decisions? Here we present an engagement framework and practical recommendations designed to be particularly beneficial for climate scientists and decision-makers that are not yet familiar with transdisciplinary (TD) research-practice collaborations. Which problem is being addressed? Climate change is unequivocal and causes impacts that pose risks to human and natural systems. There is thus an urgent need for our society to transform by means of mitigation and adaptation. Individual companies taking responsibility in this process by making climate sensitive decisions is key to transforming into more climate resilient societies. Based on research of the past decades, integrating climate information into the decision-making process has proven difficult. Current literature describes different modes and levels of communication of climate information and contact between scientists and decision-makers. Recent studies agree on the importance of direct, transdisciplinary (TD), and iterative stakeholder engagement. Although many challenges of such stakeholder engagement have been addressed in previous studies and the collaboration process itself has been suggested as a focal point, to the best of our knowledge little effort has been put into explaining how to practically implement TD collaboration in a scientific project. Thus, the 2 specific research question we address with our article is: "How can climate scientists practically implement a TD collaboration with an industry partner to reduce the gap between climate science and decisionmaking in industry?". What engagement framework is being proposed? The framework we present provides a conceptual approach for collaboration with an industry partner to reduce the gap between climate science and decision-making. It addresses the engagement using two spheres of interests, the interests of the scientists and the interests of the decision-makers. The framework is separated into two parts. Part 1 focuses on prerequisite elements and steps that assist the initialization and preparation phase of the collaborative engagement. A successful result of part 1 is the identification of at least one idea that lies in the overlap of the spheres of interest, which is likely to be a small overlap at that early stage of the collaboration. Part 2 of our framework describes how this initial idea is used as a seed to grow and explore the overlap of the spheres of interest in a sequence of stages. These stages describe different modes of engagement and major instances of the engagement process, for example, the starting point for collaboration, the codefinition of focus, and times to share current results. A key element of how the stages of part 2 are connected is that they describe a collaborative engagement that continues in a cyclic fashion. Through the stages of part 2, new ideas are generated, some of which lie only in one sphere of interest, and some of which lie in the overlap. It is important to acknowledge that both types of ideas are equally valuable. We argue that the greatest gain of the collaboration are the new ideas that are triggered and the key learnings that each individual involved brings back into their respective organization. The detailed description of the framework is accompanied by a diagram of the two spheres of interests showing different stages of the engagement process to illustrate its iterative nature. Which concrete collaboration was the framework applied to? We share selected details from our application of the framework with a Swiss power company as the industry partner. The case study focuses on our engagement with individuals from the hydropower division. Throughout the initial stages of our TD collaboration we jointly established that upcoming concession agreements align well with the temporal characteristics of climate modeling. Concession agreements are contracts between power companies and local governments that regulate the usage of water resources. The focus of our scientific research is the analysis and interpretation of climate model outputs. Hence, we framed an initial focus and hypothesis located in the overlap of interests. From there we continued through multiple further stages of the engagement framework exploring and widening our overlap of interests in collaboration with the hydropower division. Which practical recommendations were provoked by the application? Based on the case study experience we propose four practical recommendations that enhance the outcomes of the collaboration when using the proposed framework, namely: (1) Secure an anchor person at management level of the decision-maker entity. Ideally this individual has an open-minded work ethic and a good network within the company. Having such an anchor person is important because lasting interest of a person at management level to anchor the project at the company is vital for continued collaboration and to ensure that the basic interest is maintained throughout the TD research-practice collaboration and accompanied by an openness with regard to its outcome. (2) Be prepared to invest time into triggering and maintaining active engagement by all partners in the collaboration because the individuals in both entities, the scientists and decision-makers, contribute to a large plurality in interests. Such diversity can increase robustness of results and foster innovation because integrating different perspectives stimulates the development of novel solutions. With plural interests however also challenges arise: (a) securing an anchor person as introduced above; (b) engaging others in the company to collaborate closely with the scientists; (c) maintaining interest in collaboration, in both entities. (3) From the start, clearly communicate the open nature of insights and solutions from the engagement process because the exploratory nature of the engagement framework is a challenge for decision-makers and scientists alike. The engagement framework offers a guide, and both entities need to be aware that exploring the overlap of interests in collaboration is a non-linear and iterative process. The scientific entity and the decisionmaker entity have to accept that the process and concrete outcome of the collaboration is open. (4) Be aware that you are working in a field of tension, because motivation, methods, and goals of the individuals involved, are shaped by their background. These backgrounds are decisively influenced by motivation, methods, and goals of three approaches, namely: consulting, TD collaboration, and climate research. For instance, decision-makers in industry are likely to have had more experience engaging with the consulting perspective, whereas climate scientists are more exposed to the climate research perspective, and possibly neither has previously engaged in a TD research-practice collaboration. Thus, to help structure bilateral exchanges and set the collaboration into perspective, it is advantageous to be aware of the backgrounds and the underlying motivation, methods, and goals, that need to be navigated. What is there to gain from applying this framework? Applying the presented framework can trigger novel perspectives and research questions that contribute towards reshaping inherent narratives of climate scientists and decision-makers in industry. This can promote (1) the prioritization of research questions that are not solely scientifically intriguing but also important to address for decisionmaking in industry because of the process they stimulate and the results they provide; and (2) the integration of scientific knowledge in the decision-making process, ultimately supporting the industry partner in making better climate-sensitive decisions. Thus, the framework assists in reducing the usability gap, which is often encountered in climate services.