Grand challenges and inductive methods : Rigor without Rigor Mortis created by Kathleen M. Eisenhardt , Melissa E. Graebner and Scott Sonenshein

This editorial is part of a series written by editors and co-authored with a senior executive, thought leader, or scholar to explore new content areas and grand challenges with the goal of expanding the scope, interestingness, and relevance of the work presented in the Academy of Management Journal. The principle is to use the editorial notes as “stage setters” to open up fresh, new areas of inquiry for management research. As part of our “Grand Challenge” editorial series, we proposed domains in which management scholars could address socially relevant topics. This editorial opens the discussion of using inductive research methods to address these grand challenges. GG “Grand challenges” are highly significant yet potentially solvable problems such as urban poverty, insect-borne disease, and global hunger. They affect vast numbers of individuals in often profound ways. Grand challenges are typically complex with unknown solutions and intertwined technical and social elements (Ferraro, Etzion, & Gehman, 2015). They may require working across disciplinary boundaries to solve technical problems, and engaging in political action to resolve social ones. Grand challenges may be discrete with a clear endpoint, like landing a rover on Mars or developing a Zika vaccine, or broad and openended, such as curing cancer or eliminating poverty. They may change over time, beginning as primarily technical problems and then shifting to