Digital Innovation Boutique | Timeboxed Innovation - SME-Projects with Mentoring & Heart

Achieve goals in an agile and transparent manner, with clear commitments regarding scope and hourly rates

When seeking external support, the first question is often about the hourly rate. That’s understandable—but it doesn’t tell the whole story. What matters isn’t just the cost per hour, but also how to set reasonable limits on the scope of work, what goals need to be achieved, and how progress and results will be reviewed together.

This is precisely why Timeboxed Innovation combines a clear timeline and scope with the 7C CI/CD process model. We start by working together to clarify exactly what’s at stake: the current situation, the goal, the benefits, the stakeholders, the risks, and the next logical steps. After that, we don’t engage in endless discussions; instead, we work in a focused manner—with visible progress, regular coordination, and concrete results.

7C-CI/CD provides a methodological framework for this process: from the initial idea through shared understanding, knowledge-building, co-creation, and implementation to integration into daily operations. Timeboxed Innovation turns this into a structured working format with clearly defined goals, coordinated effort, a transparent process, and verifiable goal achievement.

This keeps collaboration agile without becoming arbitrary. The framework is clear, while implementation remains flexible. What proves beneficial is explored in greater depth. What doesn’t work is identified early on. This results in digital innovation projects that remain predictable, transparent, and effective for SMEs.

Learn more about the 7C CI/CD process model for effective projects and processes

The stability of a corporation combined with the benefits of freelancing

Many external service providers fall somewhere between two extremes: traditional consulting firms that offer a high degree of structure but often come with a large organizational overhead, or freelance support that offers a high degree of flexibility but limited organizational commitment.

Timeboxed Innovation deliberately combines the best of both worlds: the reliability of a corporate structure with the flexibility of personal, hands-on project work. Clients do not receive an anonymous consulting process, but rather direct, expert collaboration with a clear timeline, agreed-upon scope, transparent goal-setting, and verifiable goal achievement.

Open Digital Innovation: Solutions Without Product or Vendor Lock-in

Another distinguishing feature of Tolksdorf.digital is Open Digital Innovation: 

• digital innovation using open technologies, 
• readily available open-source solutions and
• an independent, clear view of the existing IT landscape.

Timeboxed innovation does not, therefore, mean forcing customers into a specific product, platform, or off-the-shelf solution package. Instead, we work together to determine which solution best fits the situation, the goal, the budget, and the existing organizational structure

Open source plays a key role in this. Not for ideological reasons, but because open-source solutions reduce dependencies, limit licensing costs, facilitate integration, and can be developed incrementally. Existing systems do not need to be replaced immediately. It often makes more sense to supplement and integrate existing IT systems and make targeted improvements where they have the greatest impact.

Open Innovation is a deliberately designed framework for collaboration, reusability, and confidentiality. The contractual agreement defines which building blocks can be open, reusable, or suitable as open source — and which content remains customer-specific, confidential, or exclusive. This may include, for example, business processes, internal data, specific configurations, competitive advantages, or jointly developed custom solutions. In this way, openness is created where it provides value, and protection where it is important for the customer.

When combined with 7C-CI/CD, this creates a practical framework for innovation: goals are defined collaboratively, potential solutions are evaluated transparently, suitable components are tested, and effective results are implemented step by step.

For SMEs, this means that digital innovation remains accessible, affordable, and manageable. The goal is not to implement as much software as possible, but to achieve effective improvements while keeping options open.

More about innovation and solutions that reduce dependencies and maximize impact