All projectsNamık Kemal Üniversitesi
Assessing and Accelerating Digitalization and Sustainability in Regional SMEs
Led by Namık Kemal Üniversitesi (NKU) in collaboration with Kaykayoğlu Innovation Group under a European Union program, the project aims to support 84 key SMEs in the NKU region through group training in innovation, sustainability, and digitalization. The project aims to increase the competitiveness of 42 selected SMEs and help them take strategic steps for the future. Spanning 21 months, it includes delivering training, conducting maturity assessments, developing strategic plans, and evaluating results. During this period, participating SMEs are expected to gain momentum in sustainability and digitalization and improve their international competitiveness.
At a glance
- Project Focus
- Transformation with AI · Strategy and Transformation
- Solution Area
- Transformation with AIStrategy and Future Design
- Approaches Used
- Facilitation
- What Emerged
- A hands-on program in which teams tested technology against their own problems · Use cases drawn from real business contexts
- Sector
- Technopark / TTO
Inside the project
Focus
How can AI become an organizational capability without diminishing human creativity?
The Namık Kemal Üniversitesi project focused on connecting a training need with technology. The organization wanted not just to purchase new tools, but to embed them in how its teams work.
The account of this project was structured around the organization's own definition of its needs.
Technology becomes useful not when its use cases are listed, but when teams test it against their own problems.
Scope
We addressed innovation, sustainability and digitalization in a project for regional SMEs. The project scope included group training, maturity assessments, strategic planning and evaluation of the results.
Implementation
WHAT ROLE DID GENAI PLAY IN THIS PROJECT?
GenAI was positioned not as a tool that produces ready-made answers, but as a working partner that helps teams address their own problems through stronger questions. Every example was drawn from a real business context.
What brings technology into an organization is not the tool itself, but teams’ ability to engage with it through their own problems.
The journey we designed
- 01EXPLOREA situation map was developed by considering the organization's real needs, current ways of working and external signals together.
- 02REFRAMEParticipants practiced creative problem solving and application through their own real work problems.
- 03BRING IT INTO THE ORGANIZATIONA follow-through plan was developed with teams to connect the methods learned to daily workflows.
Kaykayoğlu project insight
The value of new tools begins not when they are purchased, but when people use them to ask stronger questions.
Explore further
Selected resources that examine the transformation highlighted by this project from a broader perspective.