In this chapter, we explore a methodology for “process as withness” (Fachin and Langley, 2018). The goal is to study the experience of “living forward” by creating “narratives of prospect” (Weick, 1999). The chapter builds on Shotter’s work (2006; 2009) on a withness approach, which helps in understanding the struggles of living forward experienced by practitioners and researchers alike. Withness until now has remained philosophical with a few vignettes by Shotter (2006; 2009). We operationalize withness through embedding it within pragmatist inquiry (Farjoun, Ansell, and Boin, 2015; Lorino et al., 2011; Martela, 2015). For this, we propose to build on the existing links between a withness approach and pragmatist inquiry in the work of James, Dewey, and Mead, but to extend these to fuse a withness approach and pragmatist inquiry into “pragmatist withness inquiry.” We end with a call for other researchers to learn from, criticize, and build on our attempts to develop “pragmatist withness inquiry.” The challenges are dialogue, access to doubtful situations, and creating “narratives of prospect.”. ... Read more

In this article, we highlight that going from service design to organisational designing means switching from complicated to complex problems. We show how designers can reframe complicated problems to uncover the deeper, complex issues that caused the problems. Solving complex problems, however,
requires a different approach. ... Read more

Since its introduction, Research through Design (RtD) has taken on a wide variety of forms. Currently, there is a lack of clarity about what connects and separates different RtD approaches. Several attempts have been made to clarify these matters, often in the form of a top-down categorization. Here we start on a different path, one that is open for different points of view and grounded in the ongoing concerns and needs of RtD practitioners. Over a two-month period, we engaged a local research community in weekly discussions about RtD in their work. Thoughts and questions were posted on a dedicated wall-space, maintained, and clustered over the weeks. As a result, we identified 11 themes that indicate concerns among participants about RtD. We suggest the themes can help in articulating different RtD ‘styles’ and ‘genres’, and believe this should be a collaborative and bottom-up effort that crosses disciplinary and institutional boundaries. ... Read more

This paper explores the use of visual storytelling, for instance sketching, in organisational strategy practices. It contributes to an understanding of how design education has to change in order to broaden the skillset of design students, for them to be able to redesign organisations. ... Read more

In Hong Kong of the year 2017, a new academic community convened to attend to pressing issues regarding design as source of innovation. The inaugural Academy for Design Innovation Management Conference (nee Design Management Academy) attended to a sense of urgency regarding the adoption of design capabilities within organisations as source of innovation. The title of the conference, Research perspectives on creative intersections was therefore pertinent, with papers exploring how design and designers were intersecting with new business challenges. Two years later in London (2019), rhetoric has notably shifted from matters of adoption to strengthening design capabilities within organisations, thereby enabling those organisations to unlock the possibilities and subsequent benefits of design. These possibilities include but are not limited to strategic and cultural renewal, design of new processes and meaningful engagement with hard-to-reach stakeholders.
To address the complex nature of today’s societal and economic problems, professional organisations now recognize that traditional tools and approaches may not provide the required solutions. To address complex challenges, many managers and business leaders have consciously turned to design approaches over the past decade, including both public and private sectors. To increase design capabilities, these organisations have established innovation labs with designers, have recruited designers in strategic positions, and/or have started building the design competence of existing staff through educational programs, often provided by design consultancies. Yet to date, describing the resultant impact of teaching. Individual design competencies on organisational design capabilities has proven elusive. ... Read more

In this paper on designing organizational processes, we combine insight on reflection-in-action with the role of reflection and experimenting from the organizational routine dynamics literature. Illustrated through a case at a strategy consultancy, we show how a prototyped workshop can elicit reflection-in- action when designing organizational processes. The artifacts used in the prototyped workshop made previous implicit assumptions about the work more explicit. This led to on the spot reflection-in-action of how to improve the prototype. This shows how collective reflection-action can be created by creating a space for reflection, that simultaneously allows for experimentation. Future research between design science and organizational science would thus be fruitful when studying the role of collective reflection- in-action when prototyping organizational processes. ... Read more

We investigated how design concepts from design student teams entered a corporate setting and how these design concepts evolved in the process of adoption by the company. Our study is based on 20 longitudinal embedded case studies at a large food multinational company of which we analyzed 4 more thoroughly. Our findings highlight the role of social interactions during the process, and specifically how these social interactions influenced the further development of the design concept. Our findings suggest a need for more detailed studies of the social interactions during deliberations between the conceptual development of the Front End of Innovation (FEI) development and the New Product Development (NPD) process. ... Read more

In this chapter, we explore a methodology for ‘process as withness’ (Fachin & Langley 2018) to study the experience of ‘living forward’ and creating ‘narratives of prospect’ (Weick 1999). We build on the work of Shotter (2006, 2009) on Withness and operationalize it through the pragmatic concept of inquiry (Farjoun, Ansell & Boin, 2015; Martela, 2015). For this, we propose to build on the existing links between withness and pragmatism through the work of James, Dewey, and Mead, but extending these to incorporate withness in pragmatic inquiry. Withness up until now had remained philosophical and theoretical with few vignettes of dialogical interaction by Shotter (2006; 2009). We operationalize withness through embedding it within pragmatic inquiry. Through this, we operationalize withness as a methodology by building on the collective inquiry process of pragmatism that takes withness beyond individual situations, but proceeds through a whole process of inquiry. We illustrate our proposed methodology through an example of interacting with a colleague facing a situation where she temporarily did not know how to go on. We show how dialogical interaction leads to a novel concept as a metaphor to describe a new idea that emerged and was visualized. In this chapter we reflect on our experience. Withness is promising for understanding the struggles of living forward of practitioners and researchers alike, especially during long-term studies that allow continuous engagement with a community of inquiry. We end with a call for action for other researchers to learn from our attempts, to criticize them and to build on them. The main challenges are the dialogical nature of withness, finding research participants in doubtful situations, and keeping the prospective nature alive when communicating ‘process as withness’ research. ... Read more