Empower
Growth
Publications on Design Science
Market of Makers – How to Promote Corporate Entrepreneurship with an Effectuation Intervention
Sophia Marie Braun &
René Mauer (2022)
Corporate entrepreneurship is a challenge for organizations and their employees, for example because of structural rigidities or inertia. A promising approach of how to spark corporate entrepreneurship lies in effectuation research. Effectuation is a mode of action or decision-making logic that is based on empirical evidence from expert entrepreneurs. Following a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology, we develop and implement an effectuation intervention at a German multinational corporation. The intervention consists of two basic parts: The Market of Makers, an event that leads participants through the effectual process, and the Speedboat Regatta, a 3-months long project development phase. The intervention successfully generated 23 projects that identified opportunities for process innovation. This study contributes to design knowledge, theory and practice. First, we designed a blueprint for similar effectuation interventions and are able to formulate four design principles, which show how voluntariness, playfulness, and constraints enable effectuation and promote corporate entrepreneurship. Second, we contribute to corporate entrepreneurship theory by showing that effectuation is promising for approaching corporate entrepreneurship’s theoretical and empirical problems. Third, we contribute to practice by demonstrating that interventions based on effectuation may shift employees towards leading and engaging with innovative projects.
How to Make Smart Collaboration Work in Multidisciplinary Teams
Jolanda Burgers-Pas &Â
Christoph Seckler (2022)
A key capability to work in multidisciplinary teams is smart collaboration. While previous research has elaborated on starting smart collaboration in firms, less is known about how to move smart collaboration from initial starting projects towards excellent implementation. In this design science project, we address this question and develop design knowledge on how to move smart collaboration from good to great in a firm working with multidisciplinary teams. We outline a situated artifact for the collaborating firm (i.e., The Firm) and infer more general design principles based on this study. This study contributes in three ways. First, it develops a situated artifact for improving smart collaboration in a firm relying on multidisciplinary teams. Second, it develops more general design principles on improving smart collaboration in professional service firms. Third, it provides initial empirical evidence for the quality of the proposed design object.
Developing an Innovation Accounting System for a Professional Service Firm: A Design Science Research Project
Simon David Arsenidis &Â
Christoph Seckler (2022)
This paper reports on a design science project developing an innovation accounting system for a professional service firm. Innovation accounting is an approach to track the progress of innovation activities. Although the subject of study has a defined product innovation process, there is a lack of measurable information on the outcomes of innovation activities. This implies a blind spot in the effective allocation of resources in innovation activities. In this paper a design science approach is used to bridge the existing concepts on innovation accounting and the needs of user groups. The output of the paper is a conceptual solution design for an innovation accounting system in the context of the product innovation process for a professional service firm. The learnings from the study are transferred into design propositions by using the CIMO-logic. This paper contributes to the body of design knowledge on innovation accounting in professional service firms.
Designing business models for cloud platforms
Andrea Giessmann & Christine Legner (2016)
Platform as a service (PaaS) has become a strategic option for software vendors who expect to benefit from value co-creation with partners by developing complementary components and applications. In reality, however, established and new software vendors are battling to redefine their offering to embrace PaaS. They face the challenges of transforming, configuring and calibrating their PaaS business models to align them with existing business models, customer expectations and competitive pressures. This motivates our research question: How can software providers design viable business models for PaaS? Our study develops a design theory for PaaS business models. This theory is grounded on a 12-month action design research study at one of the largest global software companies (here called Alpha) with mixed PaaS experiences in the past. Our primary research contribution is a set of design principles that guide software providers to define a viable PaaS business model in order to create a flourishing software eco- system for their cloud platform. By synthesizing prescriptive knowledge related to business model design for emerging cloud platforms, our study advances PaaS research towards the existing body of research on software platforms and business models.
Ex Ante Predictability of Rapid Growth: A Design Science Approach
Ari Hyytinen, Petri Rouvinen, Mika Pajarinen & Joosua Virtanen (2022)
We examine how machine learning (ML) predictions of high-growth enterprises (HGEs) help a budget-constrained venture capitalist source investments for a fixed size portfolio. Applying a design science approach, we predict HGEs 3 years ahead and focus on decision (not statistical) errors, using an accuracy measure relevant to the decision-making context. We find that when the ML procedure adheres to the budget constraint and maximizes the accuracy measure, nearly 40% of the HGE predictions are correct. Moreover, ML performs particularly well where it matters in practice—in the upper tail of the distribution of the predicted HGE probabilities.
A Proficiency Model for Design Science Research Education
Alan R. Hevner, Jan vom Brocke
Design science research (DSR) produces knowledge via the design and evaluation of innovative solutions to real-world problems. DSR provides an improved understanding of how and why the solutions work. While DSR is being widely embraced in many research disciplines, its educational pedagogy so far remains immature with little guidance on how best to inform and train various audiences on relevant and rigorous DSR skillsets. Grounded on the authors’ wide experience in designing and delivering DSR courses over the past decades, we develop a “DSR Proficiency Model” to highlight key skills required to succeed in planning, applying, and communicating DSR. We recognize the different educational environments and student backgrounds that DSR courses must accommodate and provide actionable guidance for mapping the proficiency model to academic, training, and executive audiences. Informative examples demonstrate how we have structured DSR curricula for different academic and executive education programs.
Crafting and Assessing Design Science Research for Entrepreneurship
Dimo Dimov, Markku Maula, A. Georges L. Romme
Recognizing the importance of various types of artifacts for entrepreneurship, design science (DS) has been proposed as an inclusive approach that combines relevance and rigor. By enabling researchers to go beyond their traditional roles as observers and analysts of established artifacts to help design new artifacts, DS can improve the relevance of entrepreneurship research. However, there is a paucity of knowledge on how this type of research can be published in leading entrepreneurship journals. In this editorial, we seek to provide practical guidance on how to craft and assess DS studies that target Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice (ETP) and other top-tier journals.