The Five Diamond Method for Explorative Business Process Management

Explorative business process management (BPM) is attracting increasing interest in the literature and professional practice. Organizations have recognized that a focus on operational efficiency is no longer sufficient when disruptive forces can make the value proposition of entire processes obsolete. So far, however, research on how to create entirely new processes has remained largely conceptual, leaving it open how explorative BPM can be put into practice. Following the design science research paradigm and situational method engineering, we address this research gap by proposing a method called the Five Diamond Method. This method guides explorative BPM activities by supporting organizations in identifying opportunities from business and technology trends and integrating them into business processes with novel value propositions. The method is evaluated against literature-backed design objectives and competing artifacts, qualitative data gathered from BPM practitioners, as well as a pilot study and two real-world applications. This research provides two contributions. First, the Five Diamond Method broadens the scope of BPM by integrating prescriptive knowledge from innovation management. Second, the method supports capturing emerging opportunities arising from changing customer needs and digital technologies. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12599-021-00703-1.


Appendix 1. Assessment of Five-Diamond-Method using the CAMAS Method
To define the context type of a method, i.e., the situations in which the method can be used, we use the CAMAS method (vom Brocke et al. 2020). According to four activities of the Assessment Process of the CAMAS method, the Five-Diamond-Method is assessed as shown in Figure

Appendix 2. Overview of Expert Interviews
To evaluate the Five-Diamond-Method from an ex-ante naturalistic perspective, we conducted expert interviews (Myers and Newman 2007) following an expert sampling approach (Bhattacherjee 2012). Thus, we recruited industry experts from our personal networks that differ in their personal and academic backgrounds and cover various departments and industries. Moreover, we only included experts with more than five years of professional experience and substantial experience in BPM, IM, or business development. We conducted semi-structured interviews structured along the method's activities (Myers and Newman 2007). Each interview took about one hour and was attended by two researchers. After eight interviews, we consented that the experts' feedback was consistent and that conceptual saturation had been reached. Therefore, we did not conduct further interviews. As the consulting companies primarily advices medium-sized product organizations, they were incorporated as a multiplier despite of its small size. Table 5 within the manuscript (Section 5.2) shows all industry experts and respective organizations, Table A-1 summarizes highlights of the experts' feedback.  Details for method application, e.g., workshop setting, number of trends that should be identified and selected, participants should be provided to ensure its usefulness (ID2, ID7).
 Appendix 4: Recommendation added that the Five-Diamond-Method should be applied repeatedly.
 Section 4.2: Hint added that the overarching diamond intends to execute activity 1 to 4 in the proposed order. However, different starting points can also be chosen, or activities or techniques can be omitted. Moreover, the method proposes an iterative procedure model.  Appendix 4: Based on both real-world applications (Section 5.3) recommendations for application are proposed.

Purpose Diamond
 The purpose of an organization is crucial, but difficult to define (ID3, ID4, ID8).  Besides the context framework additional industry classification schemes might be helpful to better define the organizational context, especially the own and relating industries (ID7).
 Section 4.3: Information added on how to define the purpose of an organization.
 Section 4.2: Two industry classification schemes, i.e., GICS und NACE, are provided as potential tools to define the industry context.

Business Diamond
 There is a tremendous amount of industry trends that could be included.
Thus, it is difficult to focus on the most relevant ones. Various evaluation criteria might also be helpful select relevant trends (ID2, ID6).
 Section 5.3 and Appendix 4: Ideas on how to focus on relevant trends (i.e., post-corona time) and evaluation criteria (e.g., relevance, enthusiasm for customers) are proposed when applying the method. Additionally, we recommend to include various stakeholder (e.g., business and market analyst) when searching for relevant business trends.

Technology Diamond
 When identifying digital technologies, it is important that some organizations might only focus on emerging technologies to be a first mover, while other organizations might focus on more established ones (ID1, ID5).
 Section 4.5: Hint added that the divergent thinking phase covers the collection of existing and emerging digital technologies.

Integration Diamond
 Generating new process ideas can not only be based on business and technology trends, this can be also done by just using the defined organizational purpose (ID3).
 Section 4.6: Hint added that new process ideas can build the purpose, business, and technology diamond as well as combinations of these.

Appendix 3. Overview Application Setting with Students
To evaluate the Five-Diamond-Method from an ex-post naturalistic perspective, we first taught the method to 22 bachelor students (enrolled in a business or business law major) which chose a specialization in BPM. In four sessions which lasted three hours each, the students got to know the Five-Diamond-Method and its theoretical foundation. The students then formed groups and applied the Five-Diamond-Method on case organizations they were assigned to. The students were asked to identify their organization's purpose and to justify necessary assumptions they made. The students had three weeks to apply the method on the case organization and to submit a written report.
After the students have applied the method and submitted the report, the students were asked to anonymously fill out an online questionnaire, in which 18 students participated. Through this survey, quantitative data about the perceived usefulness and ease of use could be gathered. For this, we adjusted the proposed items from (Davis 1989), with four items for each construct, e.g., "I find the Five-Diamond-Method useful for identifying innovation opportunities in business processes" for perceived usefulness. The participants were able to respond on a 7-point Likert scale with the extremes being labeled "strongly disagree" and "strongly disagree". The comprehensive results are shown in Figure 3 (manuscript).

Perceived Usefulness:
 Using the 5-Diamond method would improve my performance in identifying innovation opportunities in business processes  Using the 5-Diamond method would improve my productivity in identifying innovation opportunities in business processes  Using 5-Diamond method would enhance my effectiveness in identifying innovation opportunities in business processes  I find the 5-Diamond method useful for identifying innovation opportunities in business processes

Perceived Ease of Use:
 Learning to use the 5-Diamond method would be easy for me  I would find it easy to deploy the 5-Diamond method to do what I want it to do  It would be easy for me to become skillful in the use of the 5-Diamond method  I would find the 5-Diamond method easy to use

Appendix 4. Overview of Workshop Setting with Case Companies
To evaluate the Five-Diamond-Method from an ex-post naturalistic perspective, we applied the Five-Diamond-Method within two case organizations. The results for the insurance company are shown in Table A-2, for the facility management company in Table A-3.

Appendix 5. Learnings and Recommendations for Application
Based on both applications, we provide some recommendation for applying the Five-Diamond-Method in the following.
 We recommend including different roles within the organization to include and account for different perspectives during the divergent and convergent thinking phases of the different activities. For instance, it is beneficial to include technology experts that are knowledgeable about the organization's technical infrastructure in order to get instant feedback about the technical feasibility. Alternatively, as seen real-world application 2, one can also involve one key stakeholder who is knowledgeable about business-related matters (e.g. strategy and vision) as well as the operational details (e.g. process designs). In such cases, however, it is important to moderate the discussion in a way that the participant has time and space to slip into the respective role.  Applying the Five-Diamond-Method within a half-day workshop was challenging from a time perspective. While we recommend that the different stakeholders prepare individually by identifying appropriate trends beforehand, it is still advised to go through each diamond in the course of the workshop in order to agree on its relevance and impact before generating and evaluating innovative process ideas. Thus, we recommend at least one full day for conducting the workshop. Furthermore, following the feedback of one of the participants, it can be beneficial for the organization to have follow-up reflection opportunities. This can be important as the implementation of new processes can pose organizational challenges.  Regarding the sequence of activities, we realized that there are many iterations between the last three diamonds (business, technology, and integration). We think this is beneficial, as the output of one diamond can trigger innovative process ideas in another. Similar to creative techniques like design thinking, iterations through the activities can be useful as it promotes learning (Plattner et al. 2014). To account for the specifies of a workshop, the Five-Diamond-Method does not provide a recommendation regarding the time spend on each diamond or the amount of trends/process ideas to be collected. However, we recommend specifying these parameters in the beginning of a workshop in order to clarify and align expectations of the participants.  The creative nature of the workshop makes it also possible to generate process or purposeunrelated ideas. We thus recommend to continuously check the process focus is still maintained, especially within the integration diamond. Following the comment of one participant, it is important to involve a moderator who guides the process.