All entries for Sunday 27 February 2011

February 27, 2011

What shape is my research?

Innovation-oriented research...

It starts off quite wide, as I look for "inspiration" (challenges, norms, positive deviance, patterns, cross-pollinations etc). It then narrows down through ideation to hypothesese, methods, prototypes. It widens out again with lots of prototyping and experimentation, before narrowing that back down into design patterns and case studies that might apply more widely. Finally there is implementation as a thesis, a handbook and innovations with impact (widening back out again).

Here's an abstract model (click to enlarge):

shape1.jpg

And that model with some of my specific activities added:

The shape of my research