Rapid problem formulation for Societal Impact: Lessons from a decade-long research-practice partnership

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Problem-oriented research enables scholars to directly explore increasingly complex societal challenges, yet we still lack in-depth insight into the process of problem formulation. In this paper, we offer insight into this process by examining our 10-year engaged research study of Shorefast, a social enterprise based on Fogo Island, Canada, whose mission was to revitalize the community. We show how our research-practice collaboration evolved as a recursive process which we label as rapid problem formulation - a quickly shifting recursive process between problem definition and problem solution. By iterating quickly between problem and solution, researchers and practitioners can create greater impact as their understanding of the problem, and their search for solutions, deepens.