Context: Software supporting an enterprise’s business, also known as a business support system, needs to support the correlation of activities between actors as well as influence the activities based on knowledge about the value networks in which the enterprise acts. This can be supported with the help of intent-driven systems. The aim of intent-driven systems is to capture stakeholders’ intents and transform these into a form that enables computer processing of them. Only then are different machine actors able to negotiate with each other on behalf of their respective stakeholders and their intents, and suggest a mutually beneficial agreement.

Objective: When building a business support system it is critical to separate the business model of the business support system itself from the business models used by the enterprise which is using the business support system. The core idea of intent-driven systems is the possibility to change behavior of the system itself, based on stakeholder intents. This requires a separation of concerns between the parts of the system used to execute the stakeholder business, and the parts which are used to design the business based on stakeholder intents. The business studio is a software that supports the realization of business models used by the enterprise by configuring the capabilities provided by the business support system. The aim is to find out how we can support the design of a business studio which is based on intent-driven systems.

Method: We are using the design science framework as our research frame- work. During our design science study we have used the following research methods: systematic literature review, case study, quasi experiment, and action research.

Results: We have produced two design artifacts as a start to be able to support the design of a business studio. These artifacts are the models and quasi-experiment in Chapter 3, and the action research in Chapter 4. The models found during the case study have proved to be a valuable artifact for the stakeholder. The results from the quasi-experiment and the action research are seen as new problem solving knowledge by the stakeholder.

Conclusion: The synthesis shows a need for further research regarding semantic interchange of information, actor interaction in intent-driven systems, and the governance of intent-driven systems.

In this research project we investigate how machine actors can support the business intents (desired outcomes) of an enterprise via predictive execution flows, prescriptive execution flows, and bidirectional knowledge creation between human actors and machine actors. A context frame supports bidirectional knowledge creation via interventions and counterfactual analysis. An intent-driven system combines execution flows to obtain business intents, and a context frame is a component in these flows. 

Our aim is to develop theoretical frameworks supporting intent-driven systems and context frames, and to validate the components needed to realize such frame- works. 

We are using the design science framework as our research framework. During our design science study we have used the following research methods: systematic literature review, case study, quasi experiment, action research, and evaluation research. 

We have created theoretical frameworks supporting intent-driven systems, and context frames, and implemented needed functionality in the involved components. The framework supports knowledge creation and knowledge validation. The possibility of using the knowledge for predictive analysis, prescriptive analysis, and counterfactual analysis, makes it possible to obtain bidirectional knowledge creation between a human actor and a machine actor. This enables a context frame to be part of an intent-driven system which supports predictive, and prescriptive, executions flows. 

The produced artifacts provide answers to our research questions. These answers are a base for theoretical frameworks supporting intent-driven systems and context frames, and provide knowledge of how to construct the components needed to realize these frameworks.