To what extent can small and medium-sized enterprises use approaches and tools from transformation design and what are their primary motivations and challenges in doing so: Harald Pechlaner, Greta Erschbamer, Daria Habicher, Maximilian Walder and Linda Ghirardello addressed these research questions in the study "Transformation and Design - Approaches and Perspectives for SMEs".

In order to answer these questions, semi-structured qualitative guided interviews were conducted with consulting firms from Italy, Austria and Germany. First preliminary results of this explorative study certify that Design Thinking is known to most of the companies that use the services of the consulting firms. However, only as a term, not as a theoretical concept. According to this, companies have different ideas about design thinking, but after initial scepticism they can benefit greatly from the approaches of transformation design, which is characterised by versatile application possibilities.

The coming steps of the research group will be, in addition to conducting further interviews, an attempt to define transformation design at the interface with business development and to deepen the individual components and principles as well as an (interdisciplinary) link with theories from different disciplines.