CONFERENCEProduct Development Sprint
A product development sprint is an intensive, practically oriented activity lasting from one to three days. Its aim is to provide students with the opportunity to develop or improve specific products, services, or solutions to real industry challenges in close collaboration with industry associations or companies. The sprint is designed as a focused innovation lab that emphasises rapid results through the use of modern digital tools.
The event provides practical training in solution development methodologies and digital tools. Industry representatives from associations or companies are actively involved as problem owners, experts, and mentors, ensuring that students work on real and relevant challenges. The sprint concludes with team presentations to a professional jury composed of industry representatives and academic experts.
Objectives:
To promote the development of students’ entrepreneurial skills, digital competences, and innovation mindset.
To ensure close collaboration between students, industry, and academia.
To create viable innovations and real prototypes with potential for further development.
Benefits for students:
Practical skills – The opportunity to quickly learn and apply solution development methodologies and digital tools.
Collaboration and mentoring – The opportunity to work in interdisciplinary teams and receive support from industry professionals.
Financial support – The opportunity to receive one-off scholarships for top-performing teams.
Future opportunities – The opportunity for the most promising solutions to be further developed within pre-incubation or incubation programmes.
Product development sprints are planned to be organised regularly, each time focusing on different thematic areas. This will foster students’ innovation potential and strengthen the innovation ecosystem. Solutions identified during the sprint can be further developed in collaboration with companies or organisations that have proposed the challenges, thereby creating real collaboration projects and internship opportunities.
The event is organized by the University of Latvia Innovation and Acceleration Center within the ERDF co-funded project No. 1.1.1.7/1/25/A/005 “Innovation Grants for Students of the University of Latvia.”
On 16 January 2026, the Demo Day of the “EdTech” Idea Development Sprint took place at the University of Latvia’s House of Science, where students presented prototypes of education technology solutions developed during the sprint.
The event brought together students, representatives of the academic and innovation ecosystem, as well as other interested participants who wished to explore the latest student ideas in the field of education technology.
The “EdTech” Idea Development Sprint is an event during which participants work in teams to develop their own education technology solutions or improve existing products. Its aim is to foster students’ entrepreneurial skills, digital competences, and innovation mindset, ensure close collaboration between students, industry, and academia, and create viable innovations and real prototypes with potential for further development in the field of education technology. The main themes of this sprint were education technologies and digital innovation in the learning process.
In total, nine team-developed ideas and prototypes were presented during Demo Day, demonstrating students’ ability to create diverse, modern, and practically applicable solutions in education. The proposed ideas included personalised learning and assessment tools, adaptive digital solutions for exam preparation, language learning platforms supported by artificial intelligence, tools for improving public speaking skills, mental mathematics learning solutions, pronunciation training tools, as well as solutions aimed at enhancing understanding of social processes within the learning environment. Some teams also presented educational solutions for pre-school and primary school children, combining physical and digital learning elements, as well as technological tools for research purposes with simplified user experiences.
The teams’ performance was evaluated by a jury, which assessed the relevance of the ideas, the level of innovation, practical value in education, and the teams’ ability to present their ideas clearly and convincingly. The jury consisted of four members – Chair of the jury Agnese Rudzāte, Lead Expert in Innovation and Technology Transfer at the LU Innovation and Acceleration Centre; Nora Batraga, Senior Expert at the LU Innovation and Acceleration Centre; Viesturs Sosārs, Partner at the innovation consultancy Cogenita; and Lilita Sparāne, Expert at the Vidzeme Open Innovation Centre.
At the end of Demo Day, three best teams were awarded. First place and a EUR 1,500 prize went to team “Treniņš Eksāmenam” for their personalised mathematics exam training application featuring adaptive tasks, progress analytics, and targeted preparation for national examinations. Second place and a EUR 900 prize were awarded to team “CogniLock”, which предложила an innovative approach to building learning habits by integrating micro-learning into the daily phone unlocking process, promoting knowledge retention without requiring additional time or motivation. Third place and a EUR 600 prize went to team “Zinātkāre” for their digital individual assessment tool for teachers, featuring automated analysis of student work and generation of personalised support plans.
The event is organized by the University of Latvia Innovation and Acceleration Center within the ERDF co-funded project No. 1.1.1.7/1/25/A/005 “Innovation Grants for Students of the University of Latvia.”
