Georges Romme

Eindhoven University of Technology | TUE · Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences

Should management become a profession, and if so, how? This book is a wake-up call, because the societal costs and damage caused by mismanagement and other forms of managerial amateurism are huge. Georges Romme shows The Quest for Professionalism in management involves a grand societal challenge, on par with for example climate change. The Quest fo...

To achieve a complex value proposition, innovating firms often need to rely on other actors in their innovation ecosystem. This raises many new challenges for the managers of these firms. However, there is not yet a comprehensive approach that would support managers in the process of analysis and decision making on ecosystem strategy. In this paper...

Design Science (DS) approaches have been emerging in engineering, management and other disciplines operating at the interface between design research and the natural or social sciences. Research informed by DS is challenging because it involves ‘mixing oil with water’, using a famous phrase of Herbert Simon. A key challenge here is the dual role of...

Most studies published in Technovation adopt a theory-driven approach toward empirical phenomena. In this editorial, we call for a more instrumental approach, one that effectively serves the needs of practitioners in the field of technological innovation as well as scholars seeking to increase their impact on innovation practice. In this respect, d...

As a research methodology, design science operates at the interface of creative design and explanatory science to create and test innovative solutions. Design Science (DS) methodologies have emerged in various disciplines such as information systems, operations management, innovation management, and entrepreneurship. A major source of inspiration f...

The application of design science (DS) in the field of operations management (OM) is believed to be lopsided, with most studies pursuing theory-to-practice rather than practice-to-theory applications of DS. However, this belief has remained untested at the level of the entire body of DS applications in OM. This paper therefore reviews and synthesiz...

The rise of blockchain technology implies a paradigm shift for many industries, especially those traditionally relying on third parties—such as banks, publishers, and art galleries—to establish trust in economic transactions. Moreover, it enables decentralized models of governance and thus challenges conventional governance approaches. This decentr...

In their quest for sustainable transformation, agricultural industries need to move beyond product and service innovation as well as rivalry between actors toward reconfiguring production and consumption systems. In mature industries like agriculture, envisioning alternatives that require systemic innovation is challenging due to the dominance of e...

In June 2025, we'll again be offering the PhD course on design science in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation research. Instructors include Philip Cash, Isabelle Reymen, Marcel Bogers, Jason Li-Ying, Duygu Keskin, and Georges Romme. This flyer provides info about the course objectives, how to apply, and so forth.

Deep-tech ventures drawing on technological breakthroughs in, for example, new materials, photonics, quantum technologies and nanotechnology, can help solve major societal challenges but face significant barriers in raising capital-also known as the 'missing middle' of deep-tech entrepreneurship. We therefore adopt a design science (DS) perspective...

This call for papers, for a special issue in Technovation, invites manuscripts that draw on design science (DS) in the field of technology-driven entrepreneurship and innovation research. As such, it provides a forum for innovation and entrepreneurship scholars who want to gear up for a wider and more significant impact. Submission deadline = May 3...

Both practitioners and scholars are increasingly interested in the idea of the human-centered organization. This term first appeared in the late 1950s and has gained attention in the last ten years. Awareness of the need for human-centeredness grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which many organizational leaders were compelled to focus on employe...

Creating and exchanging tacit knowledge is widely considered as a key driver for interorganizational collaboration, especially in the context of open innovation. Yet, it is less well understood how organizations jointly transform tacit knowledge into explicit solutions, which often is a critical step in collaborative innovation processes. This pape...

The power literature's focus on questioning power relations has gone at the expense of deliberate attempts to improve organizational practices. How can critical performativity and other scholars address power as an enabling force, thereby also allowing for more engagement with practitioners? We integrate the literature on power in and around organi...

A vital problem of the European economy has long been its limited capacity to transform technological inventions and breakthroughs into successful new companies that help solve grand challenges in, for example, climate change, energy production, and poverty. Various measures and initiatives addressing this problem have not yet resulted in increasin...

Substantial progress has been made toward connecting design with science in operations management (OM) studies. However, this connection appears to be lopsided, with much more emphasis on theory-to-practice than practice-to-theory in applications of design science (DS). This imbalance tends to impede theoretical progress. To mitigate this imbalance...

In recent years, blockchain has gained traction as a technology to increase the security and transparency of firms' transactions. There is a widespread misconception that blockchains, once rolled out, are fully decentralized and transparent in terms of governance. The practice of many blockchain initiatives tells a different story: the development...

Recognizing the importance of various types of artifacts for entrepreneurship, design science (DS) has been proposed as an inclusive approach that combines relevance and rigor. By enabling researchers to go beyond their traditional roles as observers and analysts of established artifacts to help design new artifacts, DS can improve the relevance of...

Narratives can be pivotal in strategy development, especially in change and transformation. In the emerging body of literature in this area, however, little attention has been paid to how one uses future-oriented narratives deliberately in strategic renewal processes. This conceptual paper, therefore, explores how organizations can use a narrative...

Public systems are facing increasingly complex challenges such as poverty and terrorism. In this paper, we seek to demonstrate the theoretical as well as practical value of complexity science, by investigating how key characteristics of a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) work out in practice within the intelligence organization of the ongoing nation-b...

Introduction Governments around the world are struggling to find innovative solutions for complex problems. Key issues are sustainability, the quality of living in cities, and inequalities and tensions between groups of citizens. To address these challenges, new forms of governance are needed which serve to make and implement collectively binding d...

Collaborative innovation is at the heart of smart city development, yet also notoriously challenging due to fundamental differences between public and private sector actors that need to collaborate, while dealing with high levels of uncertainty. Whereas existing practice-based work on collaborative innovation describes various relevant antecedents,...

Deep-tech startups have an enormous potential to solve major societal challenges, but their failure rates are quite high (above 90%). In this respect, deep-tech systems and products have long de-velopment times and thus require substantial amounts of investment capital long before the first customer can be served. Moreover, potential investors incr...

This presentation describes a tool for developing a convincing value proposition for investors, one that is explicitly connected to the SDGs. The tool is specifically developed for deep-tech venture teams that are facing extremely long product development times and thus require substantial amounts of investment capital long before the first custome...

A large body of literature explores the role of context, structure, actors, and outcomes of open innovation (OI), yet pays little attention to the mechanisms underlying these relationships. In this review paper, we synthesize the OI literature using a context-mechanism-outcome approach to identify and classify the various mechanisms observed in emp...

Learning from past experiences is essential for the adoption of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS). There is a growing number of knowledge repositories sharing the experience of NBS projects implemented worldwide. These repositories provide access to a large amount of information, however, acquiring knowledge from them remains a challenge. This paper out...

This paper thus addresses the following question: How to design and integrate a tactical decision-making artifact that facilitates the circular business model experimentation process with the customer in the B2B context of an incumbent company?

The success factors and challenges of interorganizational collaboration have been widely studied from different disciplinary perspectives. However, the role of design in making such collaborations resilient has received little attention, although deliberately designing for resilience is likely to be vital to the success of any interorganizational c...

Deriving knowledge and learning from past experiences is essential for the successful adoption of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) as novel integrative solutions that involve many uncertainties. Past experiences in implementing NBS have been collected in a number of repositories; however, it is a major challenge to derive knowledge from the huge amount...

Previous work has demonstrated that structural forms of empowerment tend to enhance individual and team resilience. However, there is hardly any knowledge about how structural empowerment affects organizational resilience. Moreover, a widespread (though largely untested) assumption is that, in adverse times, power and authority need to be centraliz...

Assessing business models’ sustainability impacts has become necessary to help firms transition towards a more sustainable and circular economy. Most firms face multiple challenges in developing sustainable business models. Many of these challenges can be solved by assessing the sustainability impacts of various business model designs. Various sust...

The Brainport-Eindhoven region has developed into a leading location for deeptech entrepreneurship in Europe. Against all odds, it has transformed itself from a region that heavily depended on the multinational company Philips, into a diverse and fast-growing deeptech ecosystem. While this success has not gone unnoticed, there is not yet a clear ac...

This Professional Development Workshop (PDW) on 'Design Science in Entrepreneurship and Innovation' gives scholars and practitioners an opportunity to learn how to conduct design science in entrepreneurship and innovation. Building on the successful PDW last year, this year's PDW aims at digging deeper into methodical aspects of the design science...

The aim of this paper is to analyze how the governance of an enterprise blockchain ecosystem changes as it matures and increases in size. A review of the literature serves to identify five behavioral drivers of governance, which appear to affect the long-term viability of a blockchain ecosystem: access rights, decision rights, incentives, accountab...

Brainport Eindhoven is uitgegroeid tot de economische motor van Nederland, en heeft zich getransformeerd van een regio die sterk afhankelijk was van Philips tot een divers en snel groeiend ecosysteem van deeptech-ondernemerschap. Wat verklaart het succes van Brainport en wat kunnen andere regio’s daarvan leren ?

The ongoing explosion of the world population is a fundamental driver of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the lack of progress in many Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. However, politicians and policymakers at both national and supra-national levels widely ignore this explosive population growth. This essay outlines the key chall...

To address major threats to the sustainability and quality of life in urban settings, many municipalities have started exploring routes toward smarter cities to, for example, lower their energy consumption and carbon footprint. These explorations, in the form of living labs or other pilot projects, often suffer from major problems in scaling up the...

Transition intermediaries are actors that support socio-technical transition processes by bridging structural deficiencies in a transitioning domain. Previous research has identified what roles transition intermediaries perform and how. However, while transitioning domains are by definition in a state of change, the dynamics of transition intermedi...

A fundamental challenge in democracy is how to control civil service organizations. This challenge has been primarily addressed by creating horizontal accountability arrangements, in which independent agencies act as auditors and evaluators of civil service organizations. However, horizontal accountability only partially resolves this control chall...

This research adopts a qualitative ethnographic approach to explore how a business organization collaborates with its customers (B2B) when innovating toward sustainable business models. Investigating these supplier-customer collaborations is essential to uncover what and how these collaborations contribute to the sustainable business model innovati...

In knowledge-based economies, long-term wealth generation depends not only on human capital and research separately but also on the complementarity between research and human capital in the creation of innovation and the feedback effects of innovation into the economy. The interaction between education, research and innovation has gained prominence...

Cities are increasingly adopting Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) to address multiple societal challenges effectively. Successful adoption of NBS and realization of their multifunctionality requires a holistic and collaborative planning approach that incorporates stakeholders across scales and disciplines. However, such an approach is usually not align...

Urban Living Labs (ULLs) are widely believed to provide a safe environment for experimentation, co-creation and evaluation of innovations in real-life settings. A growing number of cities have been adopting ULLs to co-create and test Nature-Based Solutions (NBS). However, many of these cities have been facing major barriers in trying to adopt the U...

The development of a suitable public charging system for electric vehicles relies on inputs from many complementary organizations that need to synchronize interdependencies across different activities, organizations, and industries. Research on temporal fit has focused on synchronizing activities within or external to the organization, rather than...

Scholars interested in topics of entrepreneurship and innovation are increasingly embracing the design science research (DSR) approach. DSR is rooted in Herbert Simon's The Sciences of the Artificial (1996) and aims at developing instrumental knowledge, that is scientific knowledge guiding action. While entrepreneurship and innovation scholars acro...

Hierarchy is a key characteristic of any complex system. This paper explores which notions of hierarchy are being used in the field of organization and management studies. Four distinct types of hierarchy are identified: a ladder of formal decision-making authority, a ladder of achieved status, a self-organized ladder of responsibility, and an ideo...

De centrale vraag in dit artikel is hoe een ambtelijke organisatie dient te worden geor-ganiseerd en bestuurd. Ambtelijke organisaties leveren publieke diensten en producten aan burgers, maar kunnen niet failliet gaan. Wat betre aansturing kent de ambtelijke organisatie een grote uitdaging, namelijk dat de dienstbaarheid aan het politiek bestuur ni...

This is an early version of the article published in Systems (2021): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350018739_Ladders_of_Authority_Status_Responsibility_and_Ideology_Toward_a_Typology_of_Hierarchy_in_Social_Systems

In this study, we explore how empowerment initiatives can be understood by drawing on key notions from the power literature. By conceptualizing empowerment as the transformation toward ‘power to’ by actively using ‘power over’, we uncover power-related dynamics and tensions arising from empowerment initiatives in ways that go beyond prior work. Our...

Transportation systems are transitioning to e-mobility, but scholars and policymakers are struggling to understand how to accomplish this transition effectively. In response, we draw on the technological innovation systems perspective and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology to develop a theory-guided and entity-based simulation m...

Cities increasingly have to find innovative ways to address challenges arising from climate change and urbanization. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been gaining attention as multi-functional solutions that may help cities to address these challenges. However, the adoption and implementation of these solutions have been limited due to various bar...

Systemic intermediaries play an important role in shaping socio-technical transitions. However, there is hardly any knowledge about contextual factors that enhance or inhibit systemic intermediation activities in transnational settings. This study draws on a case study of a European intermediary in the energy transition field. The intermediary has...

The role of middle management in continuous improvement and similar organizational changes is a very challenging one. In this essay, we identify three different ways of looking at middle management: (a) middle managers are no longer needed; (b) middle managers have insufficient potential; and (c) middle managers occupy a unique position that connec...

This intensive online PhD course, in January 2021, is specifically designed for students in a PhD or MPhil program. This doctoral course provides participants with in-depth knowledge of Design Science (DS) approaches in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship. The main objective is that doctoral students become familiar with and develop an in-...

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered one of the deepest economic recessions in human history, largely as a result of the full lockdown strategy adopted by many national governments. This lockdown strategy was primarily motivated by the limited capacities of Intensive Care Units and a lack of medical staff and equipment. In this essay, I argue that t...

The role of middle management in continuous improvement and similar organizational changes is a very challenging one. In this essay, we identify three different ways of looking at middle management: (a) middle managers are no longer needed; (b) middle managers have insufficient potential; and (c) middle managers occupy a unique position that connec...

Time and again, many organizations and their staff members must respond to unexpected catastrophes like hurricanes (e.g., Katrina), virus pandemics (e.g., COVID-19), or other major emergencies. As a result, some organizations allow their employees to respond to external emergencies by engaging in response actions for a limited time, like in the cas...

Floyd and Wooldridge have developed a widely used model regarding the middle managers" contribution to strategic change, in which four strategic roles for middle managers are considered: championing, synthesizing, facilitating and implementing. Although there is an extensive body of knowledge about the roles and influence of middle managers in impl...

The methodology of design science (DS) has been emerging as a new form of engaged scholarship in which key managerial and organizational challenges are addressed and solved. These developments have major implications for management education, which has been repeatedly criticized for its lack of relevance to practitioners. However, design science me...

There is increasing debate about the role that public policy research can play in identifying solutions to complex policy challenges. Most studies focus on describing and explaining how governance systems operate. However, some scholars argue that because current institutions are often not up to the task, researchers need to rethink this 'bystander...

The notion of organizational hierarchy is disputed, also in view of the rise of new organizational forms claimed to have 'hierarchies without bosses'. To better understand the contested nature of hierarchy, this essay provides a systemic perspective on organizational hierarchy defined as a sequence, or ladder, of accountability levels. I then argue...

The domain of transition studies has been drawing more and more scholarly attention and, as a result, its body of knowledge is rapidly growing. This raises new challenges as well as opportunities, not the least regarding the methodological and philosophical underpinnings of research in this domain. In this respect, transition research, as a relativ...

The purpose of this white paper is to initiate a broad discussion within The Sociocracy Group (TSG) about the, now largely implicit, role of hierarchy in the sociocratic approach. We first outline the history of sociocracy and then present several options for renewing its core set of principles in terms of the pivotal role of hierarchy -- defined a...

This paper was later revised and published in Organization Studies. Go to: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351304551_How_structural_empowerment_boosts_organizational_resilience_A_case_study_in_the_Dutch_home_care_industry

To better understand why continuous improvement (CI) initiatives often fail and do not result in sustained changes, this paper investigates how management's conceptualization of a continuous improvement program affects its implementation via middle managers. The study serves to identify the differences in outcomes of CI initiatives arising from imp...

Climate change and urbanization have resulted in several societal challenges for urban areas. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been positioned as solutions for enhancing urban resilience in the face of these challenges. However, the body of conceptual and practical knowledge regarding NBS remains fragmented. This study addresses this gap by means...

To enable the transition to renewable and sustainable energy systems, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) can successfully commercialize new technologies, yet doing so is highly challenging. Moreover, governmental policy makers tend to support measures for early-stage ventures or university spin-offs, based on the assumption that sustainable...

One of the biggest challenges of our time is to develop the management discipline into a true profession. In this respect, business schools have been accused for failing to promote better policies and management practices as well as failing to educate students, as prospective managers, about their moral and social responsibilities. This essay outli...

Office design has been demonstrated to influence knowledge sharing within (large) organizations located in single-tenant buildings. For business centres, where organizations share spaces, facilities and services, it is often assumed that social networking and knowledge sharing between organizations occur even more frequently. However, empirical res...

In many urban environments, so-called Living Labs have been created. A Living Lab (LL) is an emerging innovation methodology that may serve to reduce the gap between new technology development and the adoption of this new technology by users, by bringing together all key actors in the innovation process: public administration, education institutes,...