11.05.2026 – Romina Bourghani Farahani & Maynara Furquim, FH Münster
Digital tools, such as AI, are evolving faster than most organisations can keep up with. For SMEs in the food and beverage sector, this raises a practical question that goes beyond which tool to adopt: how can these tools be used in practice, and who is capable of executing this transformation?
This was the central theme of the latest DigiFABS impact workshop held on May 11 in Germany. In the webinar “KI-Tools in Innovationsprozessen”, led by Dr. Judith Helmer from FH Münster and organised by Sonja Raiber from WESt mbH, they explored how human creativity can enhance the outcomes of digitalisation and how DIGIFABS supports this with its course programme.
More than 90 enthusiastic participants joined the event, representatives from a wide variety of SMEs, keen to learn more and to bring together human creativity and AI into their innovation processes. Drawing on hands-on experience from innovation sprints, semester-long student projects, and real SME collaborations, as the DIGIFABS course programme has been doing since last year, Dr. Helmer walked participants through five concrete ways AI is reshaping how organisations move from problem to idea to solution, and where human expertise remains irreplaceable.
The impact workshop had two main interactive elements for the participants: an active Q&A section throughout the presentation and a feedback section at the end. The responses gathered during the webinar reveal a strong, broadly consistent appreciation for the practical, applied dimensions of the DIGIFABS programme among SME participants. Across all three programme elements, the Bootcamp, the Summer School, and the SME Challenge, participants met on a shared expectation: the learning must be immediately transferable to their day-to-day business contexts.
As for the continuous learning tools, the Bootcamp emerged as the most frequently cited valuable component, particularly for its accessibility and flexibility. Participants valued it as a low-barrier entry point into digital topics. “Real-world examples” and “best practice exchange” were mentioned repeatedly as the most appreciated content features across all formats.
Aside from practice-oriented content, the feedback highlighted another enabling factor for knowledge transfer. The format of learning plays a meaningful role: participants who engaged with hands-on, task-based sessions reported clearer pathways to application than those exposed to overview-style content. When participants could connect programme content to an existing challenge in their organisation (such as automating a recurring workflow or improving a reporting process), the transfer was most direct. This plays well into the collaborative dimension of the DIGIFABS programme, which draws its novelty from bringing together diverse expertise in both digital (e.g., the Bootcamp) and in-person settings (e.g., the Summer School), thereby allowing participants to contextualise their learning within peer networks that extend beyond the session itself.
The German DIGIFABS impact workshop made one thing clear: for SMEs, the question is no longer whether change is necessary, but how to do so in a practical, people-centred, and long-lasting way. The enthusiasm of participants reflects that SMEs need Responsible Dynamic Change Agents (RDCCAs) to identify needs and expertly execute the transformation process.
As DigiFABS continues to grow its community of learners, practitioners, and innovators across Europe, events like this one serve as a reminder that the most powerful transformations happen not when technology replaces humans, but when the two work together.