There has been a growing interest in the philosophy and constituents of design research by a vast amount of IS-scholars. There are several unre- solved concerns and issues in design research (DR). Some examples are the outcomes of design research, the role of theorizing in DR, how to conduct eval- uation and validation, and the need for different grounding processes to gener- ate valid knowledge from design research endeavors. This paper describes a multi-grounded approach for design research; consisting of three types of grounding processes (theoretical, empirical and internal grounding). The pur- pose is to investigate DR-based design knowledge and its roles during design research and design practice. A key feature in this approach is the division be- tween the meta-design (within design research) producing abstract design knowledge and the empirical design practice producing situational knowledge and artefacts. The multi-grounding approach to design research will be illus- trated by the support of two design cases.