Participation Requirements

Research needs participants from the real world. The participation criteria are outlined below. If your business cannot participate, please help spread the word by sharing this website with your network.

Criteria: The Participating Business

• A start-up, established business, or a branch/department of a larger business. Your team should work in an office in or near Perth, Western Australia.
• The following organisations are not eligible: (a) not-for-profit, (b) education, (c) consulting in management, strategy, innovation, or problem-solving, especially those using Design Thinking or similar methodologies, (d) organisations with established use of Design Thinking or similar methodology, or simultaneously engaging with another consulting provider that uses Design Thinking or similar approaches.
• Your business is facing a suitable complex challenge (Wicked Problem) including but not limited to changing/improving a system or process, internal/external communication, and a disruptive response to market/industry conditions.
• Challenges that are not suitable for this project include those that require specialist engineering, medical, financial, or legal expertise, and your business cannot provide suitable subject matter experts. The consultant-researcher is happy to discuss details with you.
• Your challenge should be sufficiently substantial to engage 7-10 team members, working on the challenge 2-3 days a week for around 12 weeks to get to the response plan stage. The consultant-researcher will negotiate an appropriate engagement period with you.
• Your team may include members who wish to refrain from participating in the research activities. There must be 7-10 members willing to participate in the research activities.
• Your team should have diverse roles in your business, such as strategist, project manager, engineer, manager, subject matter expert, frontline server, programmer, and so on.
• A business or teams with members already known to the consultant-researcher are not eligible to participate.

Your business is prepared to:

• Provide senior leadership support for this project.
• Accommodate the researcher working alongside its team as a member of the team. Payment for the consultant-researcher's work is not required.
• Allow sufficient time for team members participating in research activities to engage with research data collection. This is expected to take up to 4.5 hours across the entire engagement.

Criteria: Individual Participants

• Participants must be adults over 18 years of age.
• Have sufficient proficiency in workplace/business English. You do not need to be a native English speaker.
• Are partners, owners, employees, or contractors of your business.
• Are members of the project team working on the business’ complex challenge (Wicked Problem).
• Family, friends, prior colleagues, or prior clients of the consultant-researcher are not eligible to participate.
• Prepared to work alongside the consultant-researcher on project and research activities for an estimated period of 12 weeks. See table below.
• Willing to attend a total of 4 one-on-one interviews with the consultant-researcher and confirm the accuracy of transcripts created after each interview.

Voluntary Participation

Participation in this research is voluntary. There are no fees or remunerations payable to any party.

Your business agrees not to mandate participation in this research project. Each member of your team may make their own decision to participate. Participation in this research will not affect a team member’s employment conditions or performance review.

A team member who chooses not to participate in this research will still be welcome to engage with the consultant-researcher while he is working alongside the team. This team member will not need to engage in data collection activities and their input will not be included in the collected data.

Right to Withdraw and Implications

Individual participants (and your business) have the right to withdraw from this research for any reason and at any time.

Individual withdrawal means:

• The participant will no longer need to complete data collection tasks.
• The participant may continue to remain on the project team.
• The data from that participant will be deleted unless it has been de-identified for analysis. At this point, extracting components from specific individuals will no longer be possible.

Business withdrawal means:

• The consultant-researcher ceases engagement with your business.
• All participants will be deemed to have withdrawn consent.
• The entire data pool will be deleted unless data has been de-identified and analysis has begun.

Time Commitment to Research Tasks

The following table outlines the estimated time each participant will need to commit to data collection activities.

Week*	Data Collection Activity	Minutes
0	Short Profile Survey	10
1	Interview 1	60
	-- Transcript Confirmation	15
12	Interview 2	60
	-- Transcript Confirmation	15
16	Interview 3	60
	-- Transcript Confirmation	15
20	Interview 4	30
	-- Transcript Confirmation	10
Total commitment to research activities  up to  4.5 hours over 20 weeks *		275

* The number of weeks is indicative only. The consultant-researcher will negotiate an appropriate timeframe/engagement period with your business to suit the project.

The graph below shows the proportion of time your team is expected to spend on research versus the time the consultant-researcher will spend with your team working on your business challenge. This graph assumes 10 participants who will meet with the consultant-researcher once a week.

Expressing Interest in Participating

The following diagram outlines the process for expressing your interest in participating in this research.

EXPRESS INTEREST. Start by emailing the consultant-researcher expressing your business' interest. The consultant-researcher will then organise a phone or in-person discussion with you. These preliminary discussions are not part of the research and carry no obligations.

SELECTION. The consultant-researcher will select the most appropriate business in consultation with his supervisors. All businesses that have expressed interest will be informed of the outcome of the selection.

POST-SELECTION. The consultant-researcher will engage in more detailed discussions with the selected business and participants. Participants will have two weeks to ensure all questions are answered to their satisfaction before signing their consent.

CONSENT. Participants will complete an online consent form. This step is the formal granting of informed consent. The organisation will also sign an MOU by completing an online form.

COMMENCE. The consultant-researcher will work with the organisation to arrange access, schedules, start date, working days, and other logistical issues. As the consultant-researcher will work alongside the project team, he will also complete any onboarding procedures of your business.

FINDINGS. At the end of the PhD project, the consultant-researcher will share a summary of the research findings with participants. Findings will be general and not contain material specific to an individual or the business.