Strategies for Creating, Generalising and Transferring Design Science Knowledge - A Methodological Discussion and Case Analysis

Design Science Research has been well accepted as part of Information Systems Research. The discussion about the research process and the structure of design theories has been going on for some time. While research has been done on the relation between design theories and other types of theories, not much has been said about how design knowledge can be re-used. Other disciplines refer to such re-use as “generalisation” and “transfer”. We define a three-level separation of design abstraction (short-, mid-, and long-range) and show how knowledge re-use strategies operate between and within them, as well as how they relate to generalisation and transfer. Each strategy is supported by a case from an existing publication, showing that the types of design theories and the research strategies can be found in practice. We argue that these research strategies can provide guidelines to researchers and reviewers for planning, performing and evaluation Design Science Research.