Design Science in Research Cooperations with the Industry: Findings from Three Prototyping Projects

Abstract

A challenge that IS researchers face in general is to combine the goals of generating new scientific knowledge while at the same time producing practically relevant research results, e.g., in the form of IT artefacts. To combine rigor and relevance, researchers and practitioners need to collaborate to develop and employ methods that enable both the systematic generation of scientific insights and the knowledge exchange between academia and industry. In this paper, we present the findings of a research project where we entered into an industry-academic collaboration with the financial services industry involving three software development and implementation projects. We adopted a design science research approach to accompany the project and to guide the scientific discovery process. In the course of our research process we developed an innovative research model that integrates our experiences from the research project with existing design science research models.