Bo Mortensen

Using Workshops in Business Research: A Framework to Diagnose, Plan, Facilitate and Analyze Workshops

Workshops are increasingly being used in various fields of research as a qualitative research method where researchers can work with participant to gather a rich collection of data about participants and their co-creation on an innovation or a shared topic for investigation. Workshops are based on a creative setting for the interaction that allows the participants both to discuss current situations as well as create concepts for how this could change through generative design tools. During the workshop, the researcher will get the opportunity to observe (chapter) the participants as they interact and negotiate. The data collected through the workshop can contain both field notes based upon the researcher’s observations, video and audio recordings of the interacting group’s dialog and discussions, pictures of the group interacting, and last but not least the products of their workshop process in the form of models, sketches and prototypes. This gives the researcher an opportunity to collect a rich variation of data. As a research method workshops can validate data already collected through interviews (Chap. 6) or enhance focus group interviews by making the participants co- create new solutions. In this chapter we will explain how the researcher can organize a workshop through the phases diagnose, plan, facilitate and analyze. We will also discuss the interaction between the roles as participants, researcher and facilitator as they are played out in the workshop. The chapter will further discuss the process and some of the challenges in order to create and facilitate a workshop.