Sjoerd Abel Georges Lodewijk Romme (born 1960) is a Dutch

organizational theorist Organizational theory refers to the set of interrelated concepts that involve the sociological study of the structures and operations of formal social organizations. Organizational theory also attempts to explain how interrelated units of organiz ...

and professor of

entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

and

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity ...

at the

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), abbr. TU/e, is a public technical university in the Netherlands, located in the city of Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its BSc a ...

Biography

Georges Romme received a MSc in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

from

Tilburg University Tilburg University is a public university, public research university specializing in the social and behavioral sciences, economics, law, business sciences, theology and humanities, located in Tilburg in the southern part of the Netherlands. Tilb ...

and in 1992 a PhD degree in

business administration Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of management ...

from

Maastricht University Maastricht University (abbreviated as UM; nl, Universiteit Maastricht) is a public research university in Maastricht, Netherlands. Founded in 1976, it is the second youngest of the thirteen Dutch universities. In 2021, 22,383 students studied at ...

. Since 2005 he is professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), and since 2007 also dean of the Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences department. In the early 1990s, Georges Romme introduced Boolean comparative analysis to the organization and management sciences. He also developed and pioneered the "

thesis circle {{no footnotes, date=April 2017 A thesis circle involves a number of students and at least one professor, lecturer or instructor who collaborate in supervising and coaching final (undergraduate or MSc) projects. This tool for supervising student ...

", a tool for collaboratively supervising final (BSc or MSc) projects. He was one of the original pioneers who brought

design thinking Design thinking refers to the set of Cognition, cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of Design, designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with des ...

and the

design science A concept of design science was introduced in 1957 by R. Buckminster Fuller who defined it as a systematic form of designing. He expanded on this concept in his ''World Design Science Decade'' proposal to the International Union of Architects in 196 ...

s to

organization studies Organization studies (also called organization science or organizational studies) is the academic field interested in a ''collective activity, and how it relates to organization, organizing, and management''. It is "the examination of how individua ...

. A key idea put forward by Romme (2003) and Romme & Endenburg (2006) is that

design principles A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

are instrumental in connecting description and explanation (by researchers) to design and construction (by practitioners). As such his work established the idea that

social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...

-based research serves to advance the body of knowledge on management and organization, but needs to be complemented by

pragmatic Pragmatism is a philosophical movement. Pragmatism or pragmatic may also refer to: *Pragmaticism, Charles Sanders Peirce's post-1905 branch of philosophy *Pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics and semiotics *''Pragmatics'', an academic journal in ...

design knowledge There is a large body of knowledge that designers call upon and use during the design process to match the ever-increasing complexity of design problems. Design knowledge can be classified into two categories: product knowledge and design process ...

for practitioners (e.g. managers, consultants).March, S.T. and Vogus, T.J. (2010), Design science in the management disciplines. In: A. Hevner and S. Chatterjee (eds.) Design Research in Information Systems (Integrated Series in Information Systems, vol. 22), pp. 195-208. New York: Springer.

Publications

* 1992. ''A Self-organization Perspective on Strategy Formation'', doctoral dissertation, Maastricht University Press.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Romme, Georges 1960 births Living people Dutch business theorists Researchers in organizational studies Academic staff of the Eindhoven University of Technology Tilburg University alumni People from Nijmegen