Humanizing the Innovation Pipeline at Riga Business School

At the MIT Jameel World Education Lab, we are committed to expanding on systemic ideas which affect all aspects of educational institutions. One idea in particular, innovation pipelines, – a set of clustered activities that enable innovative ideas to develop into real-world impact – is a framework that challenges us to learn from people who are committed to innovating in complex, academic settings. We are engaging in dialogue with members to uncover insights about what practices work. 

We have seen that innovation pipelines can be deeply shaped by the characteristics of a specific campus or region. However, we also know that individuals contribute to innovation at a narrower scale — through interpersonal interactions and social networks. This puzzle raises a broad, scoping question:

How do individual perspectives, roles, and activities relate to campus-wide efforts to build innovation pipelines?

J-WEL members are leading by example when it comes to innovation pipelines. One piece of the pipeline in Latvia is the story of the Education Innovation Lab implemented by the Rīgas Tehniskā Universitāte (Riga Technical University, or RTU) and Riga Business School (RBS) in Latvia. Below we will see the main insights from the Lab, followed by insider lessons from Director of Academic Affairs and Assistant Professor in Leadership, Claudio Rivera and our own commentary on the topic.

Innovation Pipelines in Higher Education

Innovation pipelines in higher education represent structures and processes that channel ideas into tangible social and economic impacts. Drawing on a recent J-WEL publication, “In the world, for the world: Campus innovation pipelines at MIT and beyond”, innovation pipelines encapsulate four interrelated aspects: commercial and non-commercial innovation outputs (such as patents and partnerships), field-tested activities (practical experiments or pilots), enabling infrastructures (the physical, digital, and policy structures that support innovation), and supportive norms (the cultural attitudes that encourage experimentation and failure) (Sastry, 2025). One of the mechanisms enabling innovation pipelines relates to internal-external transfer pathways, whereby “an effective system supports the transfer of work to a platform that brings its end products to the world” (Sastry, 2025: 9). While structural elements like transfer pathways are critical to the flow of ideas, the human element is equally important in bringing innovation to society. 

First, this framework expands the focus from commercializable innovations (i.e., patents, licenses, spinouts, etc.) to acknowledge the value of social innovations (i.e., partnerships, communities of practice, fora for knowledge exchange, hackathons) in achieving campus-level innovation strategies. Second, as in the example of MIT, activities transform into impact through an iterative process of “ideating and problem-finding; identifying value; designing for impact; readying the innovation for dissemination, and reaching the world” (Sastry, 2025: 6). Throughout this process, campus innovators can identify problems and needs, test prototypes and value delivery models, and evaluate innovation opportunities. Enabling infrastructures and supportive norms condition this process. At MIT, the enabling influences of physical and digital spaces, policies and funding options, have been well-documented (Sastry, 2025). In addition, norms that favor autonomy, encourage experimentation, tolerate failure, and encourage societally-relevant problem solving can both bolster ongoing activities and stimulate new forms and methods to deliver impact. J-WEL has facilitated linkages across member institutions to transfer knowledge and value across a global network of innovation pipelines. The J-WEL RTU collaboration is a prime example.

The idea for a collaborative innovation effort began to take shape because there were people who had an interest in the work. As Anjali explained, it was clear early on that there was a need to bring together stakeholders from across Latvian society–including academia, government, industry, and students.” The work that ensued later in 2023 reflected this learning process, culminating in an “action-based approach to the challenge of developing, testing, refining, and analyzing participant-generated, practical ideas that could contribute to a transformation that redefines education in Latvia.”

Since the initial launch phases, we see how stakeholders have embraced the method of working together on interdisciplinary projects. The initial push and interest in educational transformation gave us permission to work together. We still do not have the exact recipe for building global partnerships that can activate local innovation pipelines towards a desired future. That work lies ahead. 

Insights from the Education Innovation Lab

In 2022, Latvia’s Ministry of Education and Science reached out to J-WEL with a mission to transform the higher education system to bolster regional economic competitiveness through innovation. The J-WEL RTU collaboration started with a systemic idea to drive innovation. It has contributed to the innovation pipeline by stimulating links between hands-on projects and system-level ideas. In total, the partnership brought together 62 individuals across 41 organizations in Latvia (Chart 1). The Education Innovation Laboratory*, implemented by RBS within RTU, was founded in collaboration with The Ministry of Education and Science and MIT J-WEL.

The overall programming, a collaborative innovation effort with J-WEL, RTU, and with funding from the European Regional Development Fund, worked to advance innovations in teaching, learning and outcomes throughout the country via two specific programs:

The Strategic Education Innovation Project Support Program was designed to support the implementation of ambitious education innovation projects through strategic support. There were four project cohorts developing ideas about the following topics: crisis management curricula with industry applications, university-driven innovation ecosystems, digital skills development, and skills monitoring for healthcare education. The cohorts gained support from MIT and RTU mentors who provided resourcing support, mentoring, training/consulting and documenting team progress and successes. Projects developed over phases of team mentoring over 24 weeks: phase 1) Launch, Aim, Map Context (weeks 1-9); phase 2) Develop, Test, Implement (weeks 10-17); and phase 3) Implement, Refine for scale, Document, Embed (weeks 18-24).Progress presentations enabled the cohort to gain feedback from mentors and learn from each other. 

These programs aimed to achieve the following goals:

1. Serve the student population, by providing relevant content;
2. Provide opportunities for faculty to engage, try new things, and seek funding support;
3. Create avenues for social impact beyond research publications or knowledge transfer; 
4. Contribute to measuring impacts that can contribute to wider national innovation goals in the Latvian context (i.e., human capital development, digitalization, strategic planning).

One standout project was the Healthcare Advancement Center (HAC), which aimed to foster healthcare-related innovations in Latvia. The work involved stakeholders from Riga Technical University, Riga Stradins University, and BKUS (Children’s Hospital), who engaged in future scenario planning and prototyping to reach creative solutions.

The Leadership Program aimed to familiarize leaders with structuring innovation initiatives across various levels, encompassing governance, funding, stakeholder engagement, and interaction. This program engaged 35 top-level education and policymaking leaders and managers in workshops and field visits to relevant organizations. It also supported 17 middle to top managers pursuing training in project management, through an 8-week edX course on “Policy for Science, Technology and Innovation” with MIT Open Learning Lecturer William Bonvillian, four workshops on ecosystem-level innovation strategies, and the site visit to MIT. Activities aimed to support actors leading, large-scale innovation ecosystem projects. This program used scenario based strategic planning methods and to teach methods for driving innovation through university governance, interdisciplinary research, digitalization initiatives, government and industry collaborations.

Participants had a chance to bring their ideas out of Latvia – during a five day long, intensive and transformative learning experience at MIT in August 2023. This visit sparked new ideas, and in-person connections with mentors. It culminated in a final conference in Riga in 2023. We wanted to hear from inside the pipeline about how this work has unfolded and what work lies ahead for different stakeholders in the RTU/RBS community. 

Lessons learned from inside the pipeline

To zoom in on the individual innovator-innovation pipeline dynamic, and how it manifests in different forms of university innovation outputs, we reached out to Claudio Rivera, Director of Academic Affairs and Assistant Professor in Leadership at RTU/RBS. Our curiosity drew us to Claudio, a longstanding member of the J-WEL community, and one actor who has used his own ecosystem and collaborations to do things that need to be done. Claudio shared with us his hard-earned lessons from his work, as the section below will discuss.

In this section, Claudio reflects on the role of RBS in educational innovation, drawing connections between his work and the national ecosystem of educational transformation, entrepreneurial development and industry innovation in Latvia. 

‍

Claudio A. Rivera, PhD, is an education innovator, professor, and social entrepreneur with over two decades of experience leading impactful projects worldwide. As Director of Academic Affairs and Assistant Professor in Leadership at RTU Riga Business School, Claudio connects academia and industry, driving forward-thinking education strategies that empower future leaders. He also serves as a Member of the Human Capital Commission of the Republic of Latvia, playing a key role in shaping the country’s policies related to education and workforce development. In his role as Strategic Advisor of Education Innovation, Claudio pioneers the integration of advanced technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, into educational frameworks. Leading the RTU MIT J-WEL Initiative, he fosters a collaborative environment that unites leadership, technology, and ethics. His efforts ensure that future leaders are not only equipped with cutting-edge technological skills but are also rooted in ethical decision-making.

‍Lesson 1: Understand People

Claudio views the innovation pipeline as “a living set of relationships and interactions–between individuals, organizations, ecosystems, and places.” Claudio values the experience of relating to different people through his work. Trained in Organizational Psychology and Leadership, Claudio has continued to focus his work on understanding the human motivations driving behavior. “What I bring from Organizational Behavior or Psychology and Leadership is a background of understanding people. That is, at the end of the day, what it is all about – working with people and understanding them, and, the most difficult part is to influence people in a good way and to keep them motivated in difficult projects and processes…keeping everyone together and understanding human beings.”

From Claudio’s perspective, contextual knowledge is highly important in fostering productive professional relationships across cultures. Originally from Buenos Aires, Claudio established his career in Latvia and has seen the value of multicultural experience first hand. Claudio emphasized how understanding people has helped to cement his 'roots' in the place, commenting that “to truly understand education, you must be immersed in it—not just as an academic, but by engaging with students and faculty on the ground…Until you are there and you feel the music of what happens there, you really don't know. And I think MIT understands this.”

For instance, the establishment of the Education Innovation Laboratory, required “a critical mass of support, the network, the community, and experience to make it happen.” He learned that this broad support was needed to push beyond “one-dimensional type of training that is still common in the educational system.” However, Claudio learned not to assume everyone wants to work across disciplines or geographies. In some projects, “it could be enough to have only local help.” Understanding the perspectives of collaborators was the first step for Claudio to “identify the ‘best practices’” which worked in different projects. Claudio has also been able to study how actors in FinTech and AI businesses approach business ethics. 

By directing attention to understanding people, Claudio continues to extend his network through thought leadership on the role of universities in AI-driven innovation ecosystems, leading to a recent publication with support from the Asia Europe Foundation. In his own work, often delivering keynote speeches at various settings in academia, industry and government, Claudio embodies the idea that innovation pipelines are inherently human-centered. 

Lesson 2: Don’t be afraid to invite all stakeholders in

Second, in Claudio’s career, he has been interested in weaving together service, entrepreneurship, and innovation. He has been traversing the education, policy and business sectors in multiple roles. Within the Business School alone, Claudio serves as Director of Academic Affairs, Strategic Advisor in Educational Innovation, and Assistant Professor in Leadership. Outside of academia, Claudio is also Head of Education for the Foreign Investors Council and Member of the Human Capital Commission of the Republic of Latvia, in addition to leading the RTU J-WEL MIT Initiative. 

Claudio’s openness to different types of roles beyond traditional academic duties of research and teaching has shaped his views on innovation, describing his duty to serve as “an integrator of different stakeholders to bring new ideas to fruition.” Claudio sees the university as a hub for innovations to take shape:

“Yes, we have buildings, research centers, programs, grants, committees, learning management systems...but any university is simply an encounter of minds, young and old, from all disciplines, searching together for answers to big and small questions.”

Claudio emphasized that the Education Innovation Lab was designed for different stakeholders to collaborate on issues related to education, skills development, and knowledge commercialization. It came down to connecting people from RBS, RTU, the Ministry of Education and J-WEL, and reaching out to wider university networks:

“It is one hub where we put together very important stakeholders of the system, the government, companies, universities, and non-governmental organizations. We put them together in different types of projects, and we have the capacity to help them to understand each other and to draft and create innovative projects together, especially those connected to education or commercialization of science, or with policy as well.”

One benefit of inviting all stakeholders into the Lab, from Claudio’s perspective, was the possibility of aligning innovation projects with areas of strategic importance to the university, industry and the Latvian government. Eventually, Claudio began to see how collaboration could create “a joint value chain where all stakeholders share a common value proposition.” He learned how global collaborations can “make the world smaller.”

For example, Riga Business School sees the value of external relationships.

“The Business School is a very special type of institution…a hybrid, in a way, between universities and the corporate world, and so we are not a traditional faculty of a university. We do research, but we are more focused on creating, on serving the corporate world that actually can create better jobs, better services…we are always going into the research for innovation - the same in terms of education. We focus more on those skills that are necessary for the public and private sector. We are an unlikely, good bridge between universities, government and companies.”

Lesson 3: Combining persistence and patience

Partnerships do not take root overnight. Another lesson for Claudio was about having persistence over the course of innovation activities, and being patient with the process. One way to map activities to innovation outputs was to set both short-term and long-term goals across the stakeholder network. Claudio mentioned that goals could be aligned in different increments. “The Lab aimed to increase visibility for Latvian students and companies in the short term, and to bolster the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises—and Latvia as a whole—in the long term.” 

The Strategic Education Innovation Project Support Program, a primary activity of the Education Innovation Lab, put this approach into practice. Claudio explained that this process was also about boosting morale through interim milestones and goal assessments. Input from mentors aimed to “monitor progress and process - urging teams to remember goals and ground the work in reality,” especially considering the social implications of today’s technologies. Claudio reflected upon how the project structure narrowed the “'borders' between departments, faculties, and universities, creating core connections between students, faculty members and societies.”

In his experience, mentoring offered a “reflective lens” on innovation projects to celebrate ongoing efforts. There were persistent efforts to keep collaborators engaged and on task:

“It might take between two to five years from the moment you have an idea to do something that is really systemic until the moment you start to see the thing happening at an interesting level. And during those years, most of the investment has to be on significant, intelligent networking.”

Before making this work happen, Claudio had spent years cultivating his own network through his work with the Latvian government and industrial sector to carry out higher educational reform. In 2023, the J-WEL partnership with RTU amplified these efforts, as seen in the Leadership Development Program, which was able to reach over 70 Latvian education, government, and business leaders.

Claudio advised assembling a core group of five to ten individuals and really investing in those relationships. “Then you can do something together. The pipeline of innovation implies alignment of goals between the different stakeholders…the alignment between MIT and RBS has been decisive in shaping the narrative about innovation.”

Trusting in the process and in the partnership gave Claudio hope that the innovative projects could flourish through the innovation pipeline.

Catalysts of innovation pipelines

The Education Innovation Lab offers a prime example of how partnerships can fuel activity within campus innovation pipelines. While the Lab has become part of the infrastructure for knowledge, resources, and ideas to flow through the innovation pipeline, it is just one piece of the journey of building an innovation pipeline. We are interested in what partnership-based approaches can generate innovative activity across J-WEL member institutions. J-WEL changemakers are already engaging as a community through different educational transformation initiatives. The work that lies ahead includes identifying which partnership structures can forge new roads for impact and collaboration. 

The Lab highlighted a few key inroads to the national Latvian innovation pipeline. 

First, by design, the RTU collaboration with J-WEL created an internal-external pathway for knowledge exchange. Thus, bonds between multiple innovation pipelines can in turn inspire efforts towards global goals. The illustrative example of the Education Innovation Lab demonstrated how collaboration was happening within and beyond the campus. Enabling infrastructures such as the Education Innovation Lab facilitated wide stakeholder collaborations and project-based activities aimed at fueling innovation outputs and nurturing relationships between people across different institutions and sectors. In this sense, existing institutional connections were important for finding ways to adapt, such as through leadership training, workshops, field visits, and conferences. 

Second, innovation projects represented one area of concentrated resources and networks, where knowledge and resources could flow from the university, across disciplines and topics within innovation. Project-based activities encouraged researchers to test activities in the field to achieve multi-sectoral aims. The intention was that projects would advance the teaching, research, and societal missions, such that researchers were thinking about how to tailor work to serve not only the university goals, but also to contribute to the wider ecosystem. For instance, AI or FinTech projects were to align with the Latvian vision for economic development, financial stability, and good governance. The aim was to attract proposals with contextual relevance, which can feed energy into the pipeline. Then, cohorts reported on their achievements to facilitate knowledge exchange and continue the productization of their innovative ideas and initiatives.The project specifications included requirements for collaboration, which helped to address tendencies to compete with peer faculty, as to stimulate new partnerships between the university and industry practitioners. 

Third, the boundaries of the pipeline have evolved over time. The idea behind the hands-on approach was to learn through experience how to adapt and adopt best global practices, including the experiences outside of Latvia and outside of a singular university context. Widening the boundaries was made possible by participants’ active engagement and willingness to share and scale knowledge developed through the project implementation phases.Supportive norms of caring for people, work ethics of persistence and patience helped to foster boundary-spanning across disciplines, sectors and regions.

Catalyzers in the innovation pipeline

We can marvel at the speed and scale at which the J-WEL RTU program unfolded. Participants worked swiftly at an intense pace with a common goal to redefine education in Latvia. Behind the scenes, there were several key individuals catalyzing the work. Mentors such as J-WEL Faculty Director Anjali Sastry, Senior Advisor to the VP for Open Learning Vijay Kumar, and Research Scientist Andres Salazar Gomes — as well as Latvian senior leaders Viesturs Kuļikovskis, Chairman of the RBS Council of Advisors, Anita Gaile, Senior lecturer at RBS, and Agnis Stibe, RBS alum, Strategic Adviser and Associate Professor of Innovation at RMIT University of Vietnam, were key in ensuring that teams aligned their interest with the border objectives. By design, mentors aimed to catalyze the workflows, shaping peer-to-peer connections as well as wider collaborations across the participating organizations. While the Lab is just one piece of the innovation pipeline, it is now part of its permanent infrastructure. 

This example shows us that innovation pipelines are human creations, adapting to societal, technological, and contextual changes. Individual agents can be catalyzers within this framework, helping build bridges and identify opportunities to innovate. For instance, Claudio reminds us that individuals are uniquely positioned to add value within innovation pipelines, through his interdisciplinary and multi-sector work on various topics in educational transformation. For knowledge to flow from the campus to the government, industry, and civil society, Claudio had to leverage his unique expertise and interpersonal relationships with colleagues and collaborators. That Latvia is a small country can make these personal interactions easier to trace. At MIT, we are in a decentralized pipeline with many nodes of knowledge exchange. Even still, individual contributors have to navigate the environment to envisage pathways for delivering social and economic impact. The interpersonal connections in the pipeline influence how agents deliver commercial and non-commercial innovations, offering clues into why certain stakeholders persevere in their efforts towards university-driven innovation. Hence, who and what makes the pipeline work over time? While we can appreciate that individual entrepreneurialism feeds into communal innovation processes, it also depends on how agents perceive existing conditions. With context in mind, actors can see what needs to be done. However, we still need to know what interventions keep the pipeline activity going. 

The Education Innovation Lab allowed innovation to flow to the rest of the country’s innovation pipeline. Three external engagement programs, held in close collaboration with J-WEL, highlighted the mission of transforming the university into a hub for engaging wider networks of stakeholders. For instance, the May 2023 event, “Light Up Education” brought together all of the program participants as well as various other representatives from industry, risk capitalists, higher education, non-profits, startups, and the government sector. With over 150 in attendance, the event allowed the general public to learn about the Education Innovation Laboratory. 

Sustaining innovation pipelines

The question of sustainability is a critical one. Initially, the work of the Education Innovation Lab enabled internal-external transfers of knowledge between Latvian institutions and external partners. This (re)structuring relied on mutual understandings of the Latvian context, and an interest in altering that context. The new infrastructure (the Lab) and collaborative approach (i.e., mentoring, project-based learning, scenario planning workshops, field visits) were aiming to support innovative outputs. The legacy of the program, however, is a shared purpose to drive innovation from the RBS campus. 

The experience building the Education Innovation Lab emphasized the importance of having a strong sense of purpose - starting with initial problem statements and working to implement activities and projects which would align with a desired future state. Close teamwork was also a key component of the work, which aimed to reinforce a shared purpose amongst participants. It was seen as a collaborative journey, whereby everyone had to be committed to learning, deep listening, adapting, and creating meaningful impact. The idea behind seeking common values was to bridge gaps and unite diverse perspectives, helping to boost motivation amongst a wider group of stakeholders who have unique concerns about the future of business in their roles and in Latvia more broadly. 

The challenge that remains is that the impetus for implementation can divert attention from understanding the process and the mechanisms driving it. For instance, we still need to uncover the recipe for building an innovation pipeline, leaving us with learnings from initial iterations and ideas. Still, we see immense benefit of lightly orchestrated, collaborative approaches which align stakeholders around common goals.

Concluding thoughts

In this paper, we’ve journeyed through the development of Latvia’s innovation pipeline, with a spotlight on the Educational Innovation Lab at RTU, a powerful example of multi-sector collaboration between academia, government, and industry. First, we explored how partnerships, as exemplified by the J-WEL RTU partnership, can transform abstract ideas into tangible solutions, all while aligning with systemic goals for educational reform. We discuss how one critical aspect of Latvia’s innovation pipeline, the Educational Innovation Lab at RTU, has flourished through multi-sector collaboration—spanning academia, government, and industry. The Lab has fostered numerous collaborative programs (including those in partnership with J-WEL), which have enabled transformative ideas to evolve into innovations in education. 

Yet, the catalytic power of collaboration, as exemplified by the J-WEL RTU collaboration and the Education Innovation Lab, becomes clearer in hindsight. By cultivating an environment where knowledge, resources, and ideas seamlessly flow across sectors, this work created a pathway for engaging stakeholders throughout the national innovation pipeline vis-à-vis project-based activities, leadership development, and cross-sectoral collaborations.

What’s striking about this model is how it highlights that innovation pipelines are more than just systems—they’re human endeavors. Individuals like Claudio Rivera and his colleagues help to bridge the gaps between academia, industry, and government, ensuring that innovation remains both relevant and impactful. The importance of human relationships, persistence, and patience throughout these processes cannot be overstated. These personal and professional connections are what sustain the momentum of innovation, even when the journey toward systemic change is long and complex.

Moreover, the sustainability of innovation pipelines depends on creating a shared sense of purpose among all stakeholders, ensuring that innovation is not just about short-term outcomes but about building a resilient infrastructure for the future. The lessons learned from the Education Innovation Lab’s initial successes and challenges will inspire us to keep investigating how pipelines work in practice. Looking ahead, the continued evolution of these pipelines will call for continued reflection and collaborative learning—principles that will hold relevance across J-WEL.

‍

^{*The main objective of the Education Innovation Laboratory is to to increase the capacity of the leadership of the institutions of higher education, private sector, and public administration in the management of international cooperation, research, and innovations. For more information, please see: https://rbs.lv/research-and-development/mit-j-wel-program and https://www.jwel.mit.edu/ideas/articles/rethinking-higher-education-with-latvia.}

‍