Grand challenge pursuits: Insights from a multi-year DSR project stream

Abstract

We review a 30-year period of systems design efforts that have primarily focused on designing, implementing, and validating a decision support system (DSS) to help managers formulate problems. We do so with intimate knowledge of the projects given that we 1) directly participated in the projects ourselves, 2) directly participated as mentors to the principal researchers, or 3) indirectly participated as colleagues of the principal researchers and were in near proximity of the studies when they occurred. We identify prelude projects from which we define a broadly defined objective: the grand challenge. Foundation projects refine the capabilities and concepts needed to achieve the grand challenge. Realization projects follow that achieve the grand challenge. We argue that, with a grand challenge perspective, we can more clearly how individual DSR efforts contribute to a cumulative body of knowledge while simultaneously providing a context for evaluating individual projects. A grand challenge perspective can also guide design science research.