Georges Romme

Reinventing the future: adding design science to the repertoire of organization and management studies

Mainstream research on organization and management is largely modeled after the natural sciences and the humanities. It aims at understanding social systems and, as such, has produced a vast knowledge base. However, this knowledge base has been criticized as fragmented and lacking relevance for practice. Two recent developments have produced the possibility of reinventing the future of organization and management studies: the increasing interest in design science research and in evidence-based management. First, we discuss how the actor perspective and solution-orientation of design science research can lead to more relevant research output. Second, we explore how the use of this research output in evidence-based management – typically via a design-oriented research synthesis – can decrease fragmentation by drawing together various strands of research and, moreover, lead to more relevant and interesting research questions, aiming at understanding as well as solution design. Adding design science research to the repertoire of organization and management studies can create a virtuous cycle toward a future in which these studies matter more than they do now.

Differences between business center concepts in The Netherlands

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the objectives, tenants, spaces and services of different business center concepts and test whether the existing classifications in literature and in the real estate market draw on significantly different concepts. Design/methodology/approach – After a literature review, data on business centers were collected with a questionnaire among owners/mangers of 139 business centers in the Netherlands. The existing business center concepts are examined whether these concepts are significantly different, using bivariate analyses. Findings – The findings of this study give insight into the business center market, the existing business center concepts and (dis)similarities between the concepts. Although many dissimilarities were found between the business center concepts, like offered services, social spaces and contractual agreements, findings show that the four business center concepts can be offered in similar objects. Originality/value – New ideas about working a...

The evolution of design requirements in the trajectory of artificiality : a research agenda

Managing design requirements of complex socio-technical designs in heterogeneous and rapidly-changing environments demands new approaches. In this chapter we use the framework described by Krippendorff [1] to describe the evolution of requirements thinking and subsequently develop a research agenda. Krippendorff’s trajectory of artificiality shows an increasing dematerialization and human-centeredness of artifacts. He distinguishes six kinds of artifacts, namely material products; goods, services, and identities; interfaces; multi-user systems and networks; projects; and finally, discourses. Based on a review of the design literature, involving two major design journals, we find that the design of socio-technical systems currently tends to be situated on the level of multi-user systems and networks. Projects and discourses hardly get any attention in requirements thinking. We therefore develop an agenda for future research directed toward advancing requirements thinking at the level of projects and discourses as artifacts of design.

Internal alignment and external viability of innovation ecosystems: A multi-level perspective

Path-breaking innovations are increasingly developed and commercialized by networks of co-creating actors, so-called innovation ecosystems. Previous work in this area has demonstrated that, to create and appropriate value, ecosystem actors should align their activities. The effort of a focal venture to bring its ecosystem actors to alignment can be coined the internal development of the ecosystem. However, literature has largely overlooked that the success of the innovation ecosystem also depends on its external viability in the socio- technical environment. Path-breaking innovations inherently challenge the prevailing socio-technical regime (e.g., established infrastructure, rules and artifacts) that is resistant to change. We develop a systemic multi- level perspective on how a focal venture develops an innovation ecosystem for path- breaking innovation so that it is both internally aligned and externally viable.