Toward a Knowledge Creation Perspective on Design Science Research

At present, the Information Systems (IS) community is debating the relevance of its research results. Design Science Research (DSR) is considered a promising approach to advance the scientific body of knowledge while, at the same time, resulting in research results of high practical utility. As a consequence, a number of guidelines and recommendations have been proposed to support the researcher in conducting DSR. Interestingly, though, almost no contribution can be found so far which investigates the transfer of knowledge between researchers and practitioners in DSR. Without efficient and effective transfer of knowledge between those two communities, DSR projects will not be able to achieve their goals. Motivated by this research gap the paper at hand takes a knowledge creation perspective on DSR. It proposes an integrated model consisting of five different knowledge transfer activities between researchers and practitioners and vice-versa. The model is discussed on the basis of three recent DSR cases. The paper shows the general applicability of knowledge creation theory to DSR and lays the foundation for future research, in particular for further evaluation and elaboration of the model.