For an overview of the approach see: Using Cartoons to Engage Stakeholders in Innovation and Design of IT Artefacts.

Theoretically Co-Design builds on in a tradition of research developing American pragmatism with social constructivist ideas. Some recognized researchers are: West Churchman, Russel Ackoff, Ian Mitroff, Peter Checkland and Peter Senge. In Sweden development of innovative management tools such as the balanced scorecards by Olve and customer oriented management models by Wikström are in this tradition.

These ideas have been applied to involve IT in innovative business development. In particular Forsgren have been an active researcher in this field and also a co-worker to Churchman, Ackoff and Mitroff .

In our research we have applied and developed business with a co-design approach in a great number of cases.

That includes Volvo on the next generation sale support system, which led to the establishment of a R/D cluster, MIT-2000, between Volvo, Ikea and Pharmacia Biotech.

The MIT-2000 cluster generated pilot examples as well as good experiences and models on how to run innovative R/D clusters with IT as an integrated part of business.

The results stimulated consultancy work at Unusual Systems and other companies. In particular Albinsson have been leading several innovation processes in major industry along these principles. The MIT-2000 approach was used to invent the SEB Internet Bank concept in 1995, and in the development of Telia Broadband Services in 1999. It has further been applied in innovation work at for instance Trygghansa, Apoteksbolaget, Spar livs, SAS, Sydkraft/Eon, and Volvo Germany. It also stimulated work in EU-R/D clusters Infosond and Avanti.