You cannot restructure your way out of a transformation problem.
Since 2016 we have been researching innovation and transformation in a crisis. We apply what we learn where classic methods no longer reach. To keep industrial cores in Europe.
Rethinking restructuring.
When the business model itself is under attack, cutting costs leads nowhere. It gambles away what makes the site valuable: competencies, plant, and the people who master them. The classic instruments of restructuring were never built to transform a company at its core.
There is no solution that works against people and against capital for long.
The restructuring adviser has to fix it now.
The employees are the solution and can implement their own ideas.
We have to become more efficient.
We first have to become different before efficiency makes any sense.
Customers will not pay for that.
Customers would gladly pay if they knew what for.
We have no money. We have to cut costs.
There is enough capital in the world.
This is why the GRANTIRO Process starts not with costs but with the people who know the company best.
How the process worksFrom apparent lack of alternatives to prospects for the future.
Out of many possibilities come several financeable business models. Developed by the most creative people in the company, built around the competencies and assets that are already there.
Creativity selection
It begins with the workforce as a whole. The creativity selection identifies the most creative people in the company, across every function and every level. They carry the process.
Ideas
Ideation produces a large number of ideas, bottom-up with the most creative people in the workforce and built around the existing core competencies.
Concepts
In the integration phase the ideas are assessed with active market participants. The strongest are condensed into viable concepts.
Business plans
In implementation the most durable concepts are developed into business plans and taken into the investor process.
I know again what I get up for in the morning.
Formats for situations that classic tools no longer solve.
The complete transformation process for companies in special situations: from ideation through integration to the investor process. With its own perspective for banks, shareholders and the works council.
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Screening of the industrial competencies a company already has and matching them with requirement profiles from critical infrastructure, civil protection and defence, through to initiating concrete cooperations.
Learn moreSpecial situations in which GRANTIRO was called in.
From the first process in 2016 to selected current mandates: industrial companies, insolvency proceedings and entire regions in structural change.
Battery cell production at gigawatt scale
Here the GRANTIRO Process and an M&A process run together: while the cell production is being sold, new business models take shape alongside. They open the site up to groups of buyers who would not have considered it before.
The process is running.
Foundry, Germany
The shareholder planned to relocate production and close the site step by step. In parallel, a pilot phase of the GRANTIRO Process ran together with the IG Metall union and the works council: more than 100 ideas, condensed into around 10 concepts, plus an international approach to investors.
The relocation went ahead, on an economically sound basis and by agreement. As a result the employees found work in other plants considerably faster.
ZF Friedrichshafen, Eitorf
With the automotive industry in transformation, the site had to reposition itself, not out of an acute crisis but before one could arise. The GRANTIRO Process ran in participative formats with the workforce.
The workshops produced concrete business model approaches and measures as the basis for the site’s strategic direction.
Eickhoff Wind Power, Klipphausen
Despite modern plant and worldwide demand, closure was announced for the end of the year. In the “Wind of Change” process the workforce, together with the IG Metall union and the works council, developed more than 500 ideas in the first month alone, from which 30 concepts followed, and then a structured approach to investors.
The process had started too late to avert the closure. The Saxon Ministry of Economic Affairs later documented the approach as the playbook “Innovation in a crisis”.
Görlitz district, Lusatia
The coal phase-out threatens thousands of jobs. For the first time the GRANTIRO Process was applied to an entire region: an open innovation platform, creativity interviews, qualification, and the development of projects eligible for funding in medical technology, cultural tourism and sustainable rail mobility.
More than 500 citizens took an active part. The first projects entered funding within weeks. Niesky positioned itself as the favourite for a test centre for rail vehicles.
Ledvance, Eichstätt
The owner planned to close the plant because of overcapacity; a carve-out had already failed. An M&A process and an innovation process then ran in parallel: new business models, an economic comparison of the cost of closing against the cost of continuing, and an approach to more than 120 possible buyers.
Closing turned out to be the economically weaker option. The site was sold, all 333 employees were taken on, and the plant diversified into LED, medical and runway lighting.
Tetenal Europe, Norderstedt
The digitisation of photography had destroyed the core business; insolvency followed in September 2018. Alongside the failed investor process, more than 30 new business models emerged around the revival of analogue photography, through to a management buy-out from within the workforce.
The buy-out succeeded and the foreign subsidiaries were sold. After the pandemic the company ran into difficulty again; a second restart did not succeed.
Schaidt Innovations, Wörth am Rhein-Schaidt
Touchscreen navigation had wiped out the core business of car radios, and insolvency in self-administration followed. Within seven months, twelve fields of opportunity produced more than 30 business ideas focused on e-mobility, mechatronics and IoT; 140 possible investors were approached.
The site was sold and every job was kept. Today, as part of an international group, it works on charging stations and control units.
Turnaround Congress 2026
in Weimar
31 August to 1 September 2026 · Hotel Elephant
An independent laboratory for the future, for entrepreneurs, advisers and decision makers, starting where conventional conferences reach their limits. In Weimar the congress brings together practitioners from restructuring, management, politics and research to test new forms of business model transformation, crisis protection and future-proofing under real crisis pressure.
Not only in lectures, but in intensive discussion, case work and formats that deliberately go beyond familiar patterns. Hosted by Prof. Dr. Hans Haarmeyer, German Institute for Applied Insolvency Law, and the GRANTIRO Think&Do Tank.
We find answers to questions that are held to have no alternative.
The GRANTIRO Think&Do Tank is a non-commercial alliance of researchers and practitioners. What we learn is applied where companies, organisations and regions are under pressure.
Strategic Resilience
European industry holds competencies and plant that are needed for critical infrastructure, civil protection and defence. Companies rarely recognise themselves in that, because they define themselves through the product they have made so far and not through what they can do.
We research how existing industrial competence can be transferred to those needs, with method tools such as the “Strategic Resilience” card set and in our Industry Match Program.
Research fields
Ownerless companies
In complex structures it is often no longer possible to see who actually decides and on what those decisions rest. Responsibility and the real path of decision making drift apart.
Putting swarm intelligence to work
In difficult situations organisations hand the search for solutions to a few strong leaders and external experts. In times of uncertainty they too are out of their depth. Involving many different people works better.
Restructuring through transformation
The classic instruments of restructuring are not built to transform companies. Cost efficiency is not enough when the business model itself is under attack.
Beyond today’s company boundaries
Value creation rarely ends at your own factory gate. We research how companies bring competencies, plant and people together across their boundaries, so that what no one could manage alone becomes viable.
Asset-rich start-ups
In times of change, competencies, machines and structures are quickly treated as a burden and destroyed for good. We research how they become accelerators for something new instead.