[1] Romme continued his academic career at Maastricht University as an associate professor in Strategy & Organization from 1992 to 2000 and a senior research fellow in the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (from 1996 to 2000).
[11] Romme served as the Dean of the Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences (IE & IS) department of Eindhoven University of Technology from 2007 to 2014.
Here, Romme advocated for the adoption of the design approach as a primary research mode (alongside the social sciences and humanities as prevailing modes) in the field of management, emphasizing the role of ideal targets, design principles, and (testing) practical solutions to address the persistent gap between theory and practice.
[18][19] In many joint publications, Romme applied design science to develop and test solutions for major problems and challenges.
Examples are design principles and various best practices for creating university spin-offs;[20] a tool for mapping, analyzing and designing innovation ecosystems;[21] a tool that facilitates value crafting;[22] a practical approach to enhance citizen participation in a local democracy;[23] a software tool for partner search in open innovation settings;[24] design principles for sustainability assessment in business model innovation;[25] a method for controlling the work of civil servants;[26] and the blueprint of a deep-tech venture builder.
[28][29] In his early work in this area, he collaborated with Gerard Endenburg to codify Sociocracy as a novel organizational form based on the circular flow of power,[30][31] which later also informed the development of Holacracy.