Brocke, Jan vom

Grisold, Thomas

Groß, Steven

Gräbe, Hans-Gert

Laue, Ralf

Mendling, Jan

Rosemann, Michael

Röglinger, Maximilian

Stelzl, Katharina

Weinhardt, Christof

English

KITopen

LETTER TO THE EDITORStatements on the Contribution by Grisold et al. from Issue 2/2022Christof Weinhardt • Hans-Gert Gräbe • Ralf Laue • Thomas Grisold •Steven Groß • Katharina Stelzl • Jan vom Brocke • Jan Mendling •Maximilian Röglinger • Michael Rosemann The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2023In a Letter to the Editor, Hans-Gert Gräbe and Ralf Lauecommented on the paper ‘‘The Five Diamond Method forExplorative Business Process Management’’ by Grisoldet al. (2022) which has been published in the BISE Issue2/2022. Gräbe and Laue raise concerns of how Grisoldet al. introduce the TRIZ method and relate it to theirexplorative BPM approach. In their response, Grisold et al.address the methodological differences between TRIZ andexplorative BPM.The critical commentary and the authors’ subsequentresponse are presented below to provide clarity.Christof Weinhardt, Editor-in-Chief.1 Comments on the Contribution by Grisold et al.: TheFive Diamond Method for Explorative BusinessProcess ManagementHans-Gert Gräbe, Ralf LaueIn Grisold et al. (2022), recently published in the BISEJournal, the authors propose a method for explorativebusiness process management (BPM). Their method ana-lyzes processes with the aim to suggest process innovationtowards new value propositions. We strongly agree withthe authors that such explorative work that considersbusiness models in addition to isolated business processesdeserves a lot of interest in the BPM community. However,we disagree with the authors concerning their discussion ofrelated work with respect to the TRIZ approach, and wewould like to substantiate our concerns in this comment.Grisold et al. (2022) propose a method that ‘‘guidesexplorative BPM activities by supporting organizations inidentifying opportunities from business and technologytrends and integrating them into business processes withnovel value propositions’’. The method is evaluated againstcompeting artifacts. For this purpose, two design objectives(DO) are identified. An ‘‘ex-ante artificial evaluation …against literature-backed DOs and competing artifacts’’ iscarried out against ‘‘selected existing methods from BPM’’,‘‘methods from IM’’ (innovation management) and‘‘TRIZ’’. Unfortunately, the comparison with TRIZ isincomplete and is not doing justice to this comprehensivetheory. The authors cite only one TRIZ reference, Alt-shuller (2004). This publication, originally published in1989 in a publishing house for children’s books (detskayaliteratura, Moscow) is a popular science book for (young)students. The cover text of the Russian original states:‘‘The author introduces students to the basics of inventiveproblem solving. The book contains a large number ofC. Weinhardt (&)Institute of Information Systems and Marketing (IISM),Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kaiserstr. 89-93,76133 Karlsruhe, Germanye-mail: weinhardt@kit.eduH.-G. GräbeLeipzig University, Leipzig, GermanyR. LaueWestsächsische Hochschule Zwickau, Zwickau, GermanyT. Grisold  J. v. BrockeUniversity of Liechtenstein, Vaduz, LiechtensteinS. Groß  J. MendlingVienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, AustriaK. Stelzl  M. RöglingerUniversity of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, GermanyM. RosemannQueensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia123Bus Inf Syst Enghttps://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-023-00788-wproblems, drawn from real-life invention practice.’’ Whilethis is a worthwhile goal, one cannot expect to find acomprehensive discussion of the theory in such a book.Instead, we refer to common textbooks on TRIZ at anadvanced level (such as Altshuller (1999), Shpakovsky(2006), Koltze and Souchkov (2017), Lyubomirsky et al.(2018)), we realize that ‘‘trends of engineering systemevolution’’ (also called ‘‘laws of development of techno-logical systems’’ or ‘‘tendencies of technical system inno-vation’’) is given a lot of space. The purpose of those trendsis to predict possible evolution of systems, i. e., to find andexploit the opportunities that are coming along. Therefore,the statement that TRIZ ‘‘does not address DO.2, as itfocuses on solving problems rather than seeking opportu-nities’’ is definitely incorrect with regard to TRIZ. Trend-analyzing approaches were also applied to business modelsand business processes at an early stage, see for exampleMann (2007), Smith (2006a, b), and Souchkov (2010). Inmore recent work (Wagner (2021), these business trendsare also related to other approaches such as the St. GallenBusiness Model Navigator (Gassmann et al. 2015). Theevaluation of (DO.2c) is therefore also incomprehensiblewith regard to TRIZ. The same applies to the evaluationsDO.1 (‘‘method needs to address the exploration goal ofBPM’’). While it is correct that TRIZ can be used suc-cessfully to improve existing products, TRIZ tools such as‘‘S-curve analysis’’, ‘‘trends’’ and ‘‘system operator’’ (9windows) explicitly aim to look for new opportunities. Inparticular in the area of the development of businessinnovation strategies in the context of a stronger orientationtowards sustainability, a series of contributions were pre-sented at the leading international TRIZ conference TRIZFuture in the last two years, as can already be seen from theconference subtitles ‘‘Systematic Complex Problem Solv-ing in the Age of Digitalization and Open Innovation’’(2020) and ‘‘Creative solutions for a sustainable develop-ment’’ (2021). We acknowledge that there is a lack ofpublications on TRIZ in academic papers, and–as Che-churin (2016) points out–the discussion on TRIZ to acertain degree ‘‘never left the mostly closed circle of theTRIZ developers’ community’’. Anyway, TRIZ containsnumerous insights and tools that deserve to be studied,developed further and applied by the academic communityand in practice. We are convinced that TRIZ can be helpfulin the field of explorative BPM and hope that our commenthelps to put TRIZ into the right context.2 Author Response to ‘‘Comments on the Contributionby Grisold et al.: The Five Diamond Methodfor Explorative Business Process Management’’Thomas Grisold, Steven Gross, Katharina Stelzl, Jan vomBrocke, Jan Mendling, Maximilian Röglinger, MichaelRosemannWe would like to thank the authors for their interest inour work. We appreciate their time and commitment withwhich they engaged with our paper, and that they find theFive Diamond Method both relevant and timely to makeBPM initiatives more receptive to (digital) innovationopportunities. We welcome the comments on our paper andtake them as an opportunity to clarify the claim and scopeof our method. In essence, the comment at hand raises twocentral concerns: (1) we misread TRIZ, and thus, (2) pro-vide an incomplete evaluation of our method. Both claimsare to be treated seriously, and we would like to carefullyrespond to them in the following.As for the first point, we would like to recall that ourresearch is positioned in the field of BPM. While weincluded a brief discussion of the history of BPM in ourarticle (for complementary discussions, see, e.g., Baiyereet al. 2020 and Recker 2014), we would like to emphasizethat this community has developed specific assumptionsand conventions in relation to how researchers approachspecific phenomena (Mendling et al. 2021). To this end, itis important to reinforce the distinction between problem-driven and opportunity-driven business process redesign(Grisold et al. 2019; Groß et al. 2021; Kohlborn et al. 2014;Rosemann 2020). While the former starts with specificproblems to be solved (e.g., lack of cost efficiency), thelatter is triggered by the exploration of new possibilitiesthat may or may not consider the existing process.Opportunity-driven redesign arises from external enablersthat may be relevant for a given organization, but are notyet considered. Opportunity-driven redesign thus impliesthat a solution is being defined before a potential problemis identified (von Hippel and von Krogh 2016). This iscrucial to note because this sets our method–and theassumptions that it is built upon–apart from TRIZ. TRIZ isa problem-solving method that typically capitalizes onopportunities after a problem has been identified (Che-churin 2016). In consequence, TRIZ is built on tools andpatterns that allow for exploring innovation opportunitiesin systematic ways. In the context of BPM, this becomesprevalent, for example, when we consider attempts that useTRIZ to enable process innovation (Smith 2006a; b). TheFive Diamond Method, in contrast, aims to provide anopen-ended and less structured approach to (digital) inno-vation. To look at it from a different angle, TRIZ–and thetechniques the authors are mentioning, such as the systemoperator–considers some manifestation of the past (be it in123: , Bus Inf Syst Engthe form of a problem or existing solution) and thus impliespath dependency. In contrast, the main focus of explorativeBPM, and our Five Diamond Method, is concerned withfuture potentials, regardless of whether they arise from oralign with present or past developments. Taken together,while we understand that the statement ‘‘TRIZ […] focuseson solving problems rather than seeking opportunities’’appears to be imprecise, we would like to stress that thisstatement needs to be read with the underlying assumptionsof BPM in mind.This leads us to the second point, namely that theauthors express concerns in relation to our methodologicalapproach, particularly with regards to DO.2. Again, wewould like to put our work into context. In our study, wepresent design objectives to ensure the quality and use-fulness of our method while following a design scienceresearch approach. The goal of DO.2 foregrounds theperspective from innovation management, suggesting that‘‘[i]n order to identify and integrate opportunities into newbusiness processes, an explorative BPM method needs tobe (a) structured along an innovation process, (b) ensurecreativity-seeking, and include (c) business and (d) tech-nology trends as opportunity sources.’’ (Grisold et al. 2021,p. 155). Again, this statement needs to be read from theviewpoint of BPM. Our understanding of ‘opportunitysources‘ implies that past or present operations are brack-eted off because key is what happens around the organi-zation, and is potentially of value to the organization. Newideas, products or services move into the spotlight,regardless of how good or bad current operations are. Asmentioned before, the Five Diamond Method differs fromTRIZ in the sense that it is relatively unstructured andseeks to enable an open-ended and unbiased exploration ofinnovation opportunities. Taken together, we assert that ourmethodological approach was sound and complete. Thesame applies to DO.1.We would like to thank the authors for their interest inour work, and their commitment to engage with it on adeeper level. We agree with the authors that we could haveoffered an elaborated presentation and discussion of therelated literature on TRIZ. The reference we provide in thepaper may provide an incomplete view of TRIZ, and weare thankful to the authors for the literature they suggestedin their comment. After re-visiting the literature, we areconfident that our treatment of TRIZ did not lead to flawsin our evaluations, or leaves them incomplete. At the coreof our work is that BPM, and explorative BPM in specific,comes with specific assumptions and goals, and we hopethat our response clarifies the concerns expressed by theauthors in their comment.Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by ProjektDEAL.Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, aslong as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and thesource, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicateif changes were made. The images or other third party material in thisarticle are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unlessindicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is notincluded in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intendeduse is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitteduse, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyrightholder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.ReferencesAltshuller G (1999) The innovation innovation algorithm. TechnicalInnovation Center, WorcesterAltshuller G (2004) And suddenly the inventor appeared: TRIZ, thetheory of inventive problem solving. Technical innovationcenter, WorcesterBaiyere A, Salmela H, Tapanainen T (2020) Digital transformationand the new logics of business process management. Eur J InfSyst 29(3):238–259Chechurin L (2016) Research and practice on the theory of inventiveproblem solving (TRIZ). Springer SwitzerlandGassmann O, Frankenberger K, Csik M (2015) The business modelnavigator. Financial Times PublishingGrisold T, Gross S, Stelzl K, vom Brocke J, Mendling J, Röglinger M,Rosemann M (2022) The five diamond method for explorativebusiness process management. Bus Inf Syst Eng 64(2):149–166.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-021-00703-1Grisold T, Gross S, Röglinger M, Stelzl K, vom Brocke J (2019)Exploring explorative BPM–setting the ground for futureresearch. In: Hildebrandt T, et al (eds) Business processmanagement. BPM 2019, vol 11675. Springer, ChamGroß S, Stelzl K, Grisold T, Mendling J, Röglinger M, vom Brocke J(2021) The business process design space for exploring processredesign alternatives. Bus Process Manag J 27(8):25–56. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-03-2020-0116Kohlborn T, Mueller O, Poeppelbuss J, Roeglinger M (2014)Interview with Michael Rosemann on ambidextrous businessprocess management. Bus Process Manag J 20(4):634–638Koltze K, Souchkov V (2017) Systematische Innovation (in German).Hanser, MunichLyubomirsky A et al (2018) Trends of engineering system evolution(TESE). TRIZ Consulting GroupMann D (2007) Hands-on systematic innovation for business andmanagement. IFR PressMendling J, Berente N, Seidel S, Grisold T (2021) Pluralism andpragmatism in the information systems field: the case of researchon business processes and organizational routines. Data BaseAdv Inf Syst 52(2):127–140Recker J (2014) Suggestions for the next wave of BPM research:strengthening the theoretical core and exploring the protectivebelt. J Inf Technol Theor Appl 15(2):5–20Rosemann M (2020) Explorative process design patterns. In: Inter-national conference on business process management. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58666-9_20123: , Bus Inf Syst EngShpakovsky N (2006) Evolution trees. Analysis of technical infor-mation and generation of new ideas, MoscowSmith H (2006a) Process innovation. P-TRIZ in 11 parts (Tech. Rep.).Published online at bptrends.com. Accessed 11 Jan 2023Smith H (2006b) P-TRIZ in the history of business process. Publishedonline Accessed 11 Jan 2023 https://www.bptrends.com/publicationfiles/04-06-COL–P-TRIZ-3-Smith.pdf.Souchkov V (2010) TRIZ and systematic business model innovation.In: Proceedings TRIZ Future, Bergamovon Hippel E, von Krogh G (2016) Crossroads–identifying viable‘‘need–solution pairs’’: problem solving without problem for-mulation. Organ Sci 27(1):207–221Wagner L (2021) Business model revolution: creative ideas for newbusiness models through the use of TRIZ. Unpublished master’sthesis, University of Applied Science Aalen123: , Bus Inf Syst Eng

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