Interactive research for production and work development

Interactive research performed as a collaborative approach in conjunction with organizations is considered a new and promising alternative to other research approaches. The purpose of this paper is to describe how interactive research could be used in the interaction between researchers and organizations when running projects to develop production systems and work performed in these systems. It also aims to identify advantages and disadvantages when applying interactive research. Two long term interactive research projects, organised in collaboration with the partnership of Helix Vinn Excellence Centre at Linkoping University were performed and data were collected from documentation of interactive seminars, from notes and from interviews with key actors. Interactive research offers several advantages in comparison with traditional research approaches, foremost higher practitioner involvement and validation opportunities of the results. There are also several difficulties, foremost the need of extensive resources and competencies for the research. The overall experiences from participating practitioners were that they considered that the discussions had been useful, stimulating and interesting, and that the fast feedback from data collection was appreciated. One crucial issue is to what extent this interactive research approach may contribute to high quality research, or to what extent the pressure from the practitioners for actionable practical results will take over.