Ill-structured management problems are of paramount importance for organizations today. As they are complex to solve, they are undertaken by teams of diverse individuals who make use of tools to help them in solving such problems. Most tools either focus on supporting collaborative practices or are dedicated to solving specific ill-structured problems. In this paper, we bridge these two perspectives and provide design principles for tools that both support collaboration and are tailored for specific ill-structured problems. We derived these design principles from our participant observation of two critical cases of such collaborative tools: the Business Model Canvas and the Team Alignment Map. We lay the theoretical and design foundations for future developments of similar collaborative tools. Our paper illustrates the value that the IS discipline can bring to the increasing call for a design approach to management by rigorously developing tools for co-design.

The Business Model Canvas project cleared the path for the development of a new tool type that we refer to as visual inquiry tools. Such tools build on design thinking techniques to allow management practitioners to jointly inquire into specific strategic management problems. As the interest in and the emergence of visual inquiry tools gain momentum, it is important to formalize the design knowledge that future designers can build on to develop such tools. Thus, we propose a design theory for visual inquiry tools based on the design knowledge accumulated within and across three projects: the Business Model Canvas, the Value Proposition Canvas, and the Team Alignment Map. We outline the design principles (among others) that should be followed for developing visual inquiry tools for other strategic management problems. Our study addresses the lack of guidance in the development of visual inquiry tools and the lack of methodological guidance in design science research on how to theorize and formalize knowledge across multiple projects. We provide a methodological process for analyzing multiple-project data by bridging methodological insights from design science research and qualitative methods from the social sciences.

Brand identity is of paramount importance for companies. Owing to the advancement of technology, faster innovation, growing competition, and more demanding consumers, managing a brand is becoming increasingly complex. This is especially true for entrepreneurs in startups and SMEs, who may not have the knowledge and various resources to ensure a clear branding strategy. This paper describes the development, in three steps, of a visual collaboration tool that supports practitioners in SMEs and startups to collaboratively strategize their brand identity in a structured way. This paper reports the creation, demonstration, and a first evaluation of what we have called the Brand Identity Tool.

Purpose Being able to communicate a clear identity to different stakeholders is crucial for SMEs and startups in today’s world, which is characterised by accelerated innovation, growing competition and increasingly connected consumers. However, this can be a complex task for small organisations. The purpose of this paper is to propose a visual tool that supports entrepreneurs in SMEs and startups to collaboratively develop their identity communication strategy. Design/methodology/approach The paper follows a design science research approach. The authors propose the design of a tool as well as some preliminary qualitative evaluations. The authors conducted three iterations between design and evaluation, where the results of the evaluations are implemented in the design. Findings The authors demonstrate how to design strategic tools for allowing teams to co-design their identity communication strategy and present the tool. The authors also evaluate its use and find out through the preliminary evaluations that it could be easy to use and useful for practitioners. Originality/value The originality of this paper lays in the novelty of the tool and its development. Such a tool addressing identity communication strategy has not been developed with a scientific approach until now.