Knowledge co-production in \u201cBig Science\u201d projects \u2013 i.e. scientific endeavours characterized by organizational complexity due to their size, exploratory nature, and diversity of participating specializations, cultures, and individual orientations (Child, Ihrig, and Merali, 2014) \u2013 is a brand-new concept, which is based on the assumption that lay people are able to establish dynamic and contingent relationships with professional researchers and/or expert scientists, in an attempt to contribute in forming, validating, and adapting knowledge (Bonney et al., 2014). Our aim here is to draw a more comprehensive picture of this phenomenon, in order to better frame, on the one hand, the conceptual and contextual underpinnings of knowledge co-production in Big Science and, on the other hand, to disentangle the role played by lay people who \u2013 as volunteers \u2013 support expert scientists in pushing forward scientific knowledge. Also, this paper focuses on how knowledge co-production empowers Big Science organizations\u2019 capacity and dynamic reach, enabling them to develop a greater ability to manage unforeseen and/or unforeseeable external forces and to become more resilient
