Designing plans for organizational development, lessons from three large-scale SME-initiatives

This paper reflects upon the way that we balanced design and development in three specific case projects in order to contribute to creating and accumulating knowledge that is both relevant to practitioners and academics. More specifically, it is shown how learning within one project was used to improve the design of the next project. The three projects were set up in the context of government-sponsored social science programs and aimed at improving innovation in SMEs. As the paper shows, looking at these three projects shows the contribution from seeing design and development as two sides of the same coin.

Keywords design-oriented research, organizational development, large-scale projects (JEL M10)

UNU-MERIT Working Papers ISSN 1871-9872