Johanna Fischer is the Founder and Managing Director of tmf dialogue, an international consultancy specialising in strategic communication, knowledge exchange and destination development. She is also the creator of Transformation in Practice (TIP)—a systems-based approach that explores how complex transformations emerge and how they can be shaped in practice.
For almost four decades, she has worked internationally with destinations, governments, convention bureaux, researchers, businesses and innovation networks, supporting organisations in navigating complex change through interdisciplinary collaboration.
Her work begins with a simple observation: transformation rarely fails because of a lack of ideas. More often, knowledge, initiatives and stakeholders remain disconnected, preventing existing potential from creating meaningful impact.
Using the Innovation Helix as an analytical lens, Johanna identifies existing strengths, missing connections and opportunities for collaboration across research, policy, business, education and civil society. Through Transformation in Practice, she develops strategic frameworks that help organisations align existing initiatives, reveal hidden relationships and create coherent pathways for long-term transformation.
Alongside designing individual projects, conferences and learning experiences, Johanna develops transformation architectures that provide the strategic direction within which local partners and subject experts can create context-specific solutions. Through Context Curation, systems thinking and narrative design, she helps organisations recognise patterns that are often hidden in plain sight and connects them into a shared direction and narrative.
Whether working on destination strategies, regional development, innovation ecosystems or tourism, her work always starts with the same question:
What strengths, knowledge and initiatives already exist—and how can they become part of a coherent transformation?