| Structural barriers and enablers | “We have a problem in the association as we cannot be innovative with regard to price, for instance we cannot hold shares in companies we work for.”– Partner, established firm | “It is a problem that there are no common standards for the design and building process internationally.” – Partner, established firm |
| “I left the association … their entire model encourages bad behaviour and actions in self-interest. Out of principle I did not want to be part of that.” – Founder, new firm | “We need broader competencies now [due to digitalization], especially higher up, in top management.”– Partner, established firm |
| “Professional partnerships create short economies where partners would rather distribute the annual profits among the partners than make the long-term investment in digital technology.”– Founder, new firm | “We have set up a sister firm for our work with BIM [building information modeling] and that has grown a lot in the last years, I think we started with 3 people and now, two years later, there are 30 there. So that is pretty cool.”– Associate architect, established firm |
| “Many partnering lawyers also have veto power.”– Partner, established firm | “We are competing with some of the newly started visualization studios of the large firms.” – Founder, new firm |
| “The overriding barrier to change is that their entire business model is based on the hour. All of it; how you evaluate lawyers, how you measure profitability, how you measure everything. It is all in the hours.”– Founder, new firm | |
| Cultural barriers and enablers | “We wanted to create a culture where individuals would dare to be innovative and try new things.” – Founder, new firm | “Architecture is a good combination of creativity and being tech-savvy, and I think it is fun.”– Architect, established firm |
| “It is a little bit like being Robin Hood; we want to create an opportunity to help more people with the law.” – Founder, new firm | “We are expected to embrace new technology – that is part of doing a good job.” – Partner, established firm |
| “Why the legal industry is not in the forefront? It is because lawyers focus a lot on the here and now.” – Associate, established firm | “Well, I studied at the department of art – and really it was all about design and representation, we were not even allowed to use computers … so creativity and artistic quality is really the foundation of this work, for me.” – Architect, established firm |
| “Most big dragons just sit still in the boat when new small firms arise. I get so angry when I think about how long it takes ” – Associate, established firm | “Such shapes were only used in buildings that were important enough to have the architects on site during the building process – such as the Opera House in Sidney or Gaudi's work in Barcelona – but now we can all use it.”– Architect, established firm |
| “This is not an industry eager to change.” – Associate, established firm | |