Take part in the activities!
ESI program consists of 4 parts:
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Inspiration - various inspiring events, including seminars/discussions, podcasts, industry events.
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Education one to three month focused training courses.
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Incubation - participation in a business incubator.
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Post-incubation - consultations with industry experts.
Inspiration
Webinars
CIVITTA representative Kristaps Budrēvics will talk about his experience in attracting sustainable financing for his business during the webinar. Participants will be able to learn about financing types, costs, attraction process, steps and risks.
Activity time 07.04.22., 15:30, Zoom platforma
The webinar will be hosted by Anna Doškina, chairwoman of Zero Waste Latvija. In the webinar, you will be able to learn how to distinguish real eco-innovations from fake solutions, several popular myths related to business development with sustainability and circular economy.
Activity time 07.04.22., 15:30, Zoom platforma
Latvian Social Entrepreneurship Association will talk about the essence of social entrepreneurship, statistics in Latvia and examples, both in Latvia and in the world, at the live event together with the social entrepreneur "Freedom of Movement" ("Ogres Varde"). Aija Vule, a representative of the social enterprise "Freedom of Freedom", will also join the webinar, who will talk about her company's experience and lessons learned.
Activity time 27.04.22., 17:00, Zoom platforma
28. on July 28th on July 28th at 16:00 Dr. Pablo Munoz Roman, professor of entrepreneurship in the Durham university, will host a webinar about on social & sustainable entrepreneurship. During the years he has done numerous research works in sustainability niche and have gained media coverage from the leading management journals.
ESI programmu kopīgi īsteno vairāki izglītības un rūpniecības pārstāvji – Stokholmas Ekonomikas augstskola Rīgā, Latvijas Mākslas akadēmija, Rīgas Juridiskā augstskola, Rēzeknes Tehnoloģiju akadēmija, konsultāciju uzņēmums Civitta Latvija un nozares partneri (Latvijas Sociālās uzņēmējdarbības asociācija, Zero Waste Latvia, Techhub Riga, Cietvielu fizikas institūts, Latvijas Universitāte, Rēzeknes Biznesa asociācija, Latvijas Elektrotehnikas un elektronikas rūpniecības asociācija).
The event will be held in English. It is required to register for the event through the following link: Register Here Activity time: 15.11.22., 17:00, Zoom platform (link will be sent out shortly before the webinar) https://tinyurl.com/4pt8ry3k Meeting link will be sent to participants shortly before the event.
ESI student innovation program of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga on October 11, at 17:00 invites to join webinar, led by YoPlayDo founder Andris Kaušelis. During this webinar, it will be possible to get a unique insight into the path of how YoPlayDo came from a business idea to a successful and acknowledged company for children’s football training planning and analysis.
YoPlayDo.com - Young Players Dossier is a professional, high-quality assistant to a football coach, helping him to maintain statistics on the development of young players. Our platform helps fully digitize data of young athletes. The information gathered in this way is becoming in demand among football schools, federations and parents of players. This greatly simplifies the process of exchanging data.
During webinar Andris will tell details about YoPlayDo creation, share his experience and give inspiration by answering to your questions. Event will be held in Latvian. It is required to register for the event through the following link: https://forms.gle/rw3fC4SExp8SnktDA
Activity time October 11, at 17:00, Zoom (access link will be sent out to registered participants shortly before event).
Nordigen is a tool that allows you to automate the analysis of borrowers’ bank account statements, making this process both faster and providing a higher quality assessment. It is an alternative offer to the work of bank loan specialists and other players in the lending industry. In addition, with Nordigen, it is possible to consider more applications, assess the risks, and issue more loans, without risking the credit provider himself.
ESI Student Innovation Program of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga invites you to participate in an online webinar on November 15, 17:00.
This webinar will be led by Elvīra Krēķe, Business Development Manager @DeepOpinion and Founder of Legally. The webinar will be held in English on the topic - Exploring Intelligent Automation. Get a unique insight into the story of founding Legally, the ambition to automate business processes in the legal industry.
Legally launched its first website with automated document forms for use to customers in the first quarter of 2019. Legally successfully became a member of the LIAA incubator, graduated from the Startup Wise Guys pre-acceleration program from which was then admitted to the Estonian B2B SaaS drafting and successfully finished the launch date of the site with 800+ site visitors.
You will also learn:
- Elvīra’s journey from automating documents in the legal industry to AI?
- What is Intelligent Automation, and how to think about it?
- What are the opportunities and possible predictions of AI in the B2B sector?
The event will be held in English. It is required to register for the event through the following link: Register Here Activity time: 15.11.22., 17:00, Zoom platform (link will be sent out shortly before the webinar) Exploring IA – Google Forms
The event is supported by ESI program partner organisations: Art Academy of Latvia (LMA), Rezekne Academy of Technologies (RTA), Riga Graduate School of Law (RGSL), Civitta, TechHub, Riga TechGirls, LSUA, LETERA, LU CFI.
Discussion will be led by Kārlis Karolis, Baltic Head of Innovations in SEB.
Open Workshop series
You are kindly invited to attend the workshop “Constructing the Central and Eastern European woman entrepreneur: A discourse analysis of 30 years of research on women’s entrepreneurship in the (post-) transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe” by Sanita Rugina.
The aim of the Open Workshop Series in Business and Management Studies is to promote top-quality academic and applied research in various fields of the social sciences. This is a unique opportunity for sharing knowledge and networking with local and international community members.
Activity time: 13.10.22., plkst. 15:00-17:00, W32 at Stockholm School fo Economics of Riga
You are kindly invited to attend the workshop “Minimum Wage Policy and Labor Tax Evasion in Latvia” by Nicolas Gavoille.
The aim of the Open Workshop Series in Business and Management Studies is to promote top-quality academic and applied research in various fields of the social sciences. This is a unique opportunity for sharing knowledge and networking with local and international community members.
Speaker: Nicolas Gavoille, Associate Professor, SSE Riga
The labor markets of many transition countries are characterized by two features: a spike at the minimum wage in wage distribution and widespread use of so-called envelope wages, i.e., non-declared cash coming in addition to the official wage. The interactions between minimum wage policy and tax evasion however remain largely unknown. In this talk, I will provide an overview of three recent papers coauthored with Anna Zasova investigating this interaction in Latvia.
First, we examine the large spike at the exactly the minimum wage in the wage distribution. Are tax evaders overrepresented among minimum wage earners? Beyond anecdotal evidence, only scarce concrete evidence documents this point. We present a body of suggestive evidence highlighting the prevalence of wage underreporting among minimum wage earners in Latvia.
Second, we use audit data and detailed administrative firm-level information to estimate the share of firms likely to underreport employees’ wage in Latvia. We train several machine learning algorithms on the set of audited firms, evaluate their out-of-sample performance and then apply them to non-audited firms. Our results indicate that nearly 40% of firms are likely to be involved in labor tax evasion, with large heterogeneity across sectors.
Third, we study firm-level employment effects of a large and biting minimum wage increase in the context of widespread wage underreporting. We show that firms engaged in labor tax evasion are insensitive to the minimum wage shock. Our results indicate that these firms use wage underreporting as an adjustment margin, converting (part of) undeclared cash payments into legal wage. Increasing minimum wage contributes to tax rule enforcement, but this comes at the cost of negative employment consequences for compliant firms.
Nicolas Gavoille is Associate Professor at SSE Riga and a research fellow at BICEPS. His main research interests are in the field of public economics and labour economics. He published articles in academic reviews such as the European Economic Review, the Journal of Comparative Economics, and the IMF Economic Review. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Rennes 1, France, and is a board member of the Baltic Economic Association as well as a member of the Editorial Committee of the Baltic Journal of Economics.
Discussion moderated by Prof. Arnis Sauka.
Attendance is free of charge.
To register, please fill in the following form.
Activity time: 28.10.22., plkst. 15:00-17:00, W32, at Stockholm School fo Economics in Riga
You are kindly invited to attend the workshop “Is it just about me?
A comparison between individual and cultural strategies of learning from failure” by Börje Boers.
The aim of the Open Workshop Series in Business and Management Studies is to promote top-quality academic and applied research in various fields of the social sciences. This is a unique opportunity for sharing knowledge and networking with local and international community members.
Date: November 25, 15-17.00
Venue: Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Strelnieku iela 4a, Riga. Room: W32
Speaker: Assoc. prof. Börje Boers, University of Skövde, Sweden
The aim of this exploratory study is to research individual and cultural strategies of learning from failure amongst German, Indian and Swedish university students. Study provides (1) a framework of typal similarities of failure learning within the national cultures of Germany, India and Sweden, as well as (2) understanding of cultural effects on failure learning and (3) insights for entrepreneurship educators to develop programs that steer discussions and reflections on the event of failure as a likely part of the entrepreneurial process. The results show that both culture-based strategies as well as culturally independent typical subjectivities in learning from failure exist for the three nations Germany, India and Sweden. The defined typologies can broaden our understanding of learning from failure at an intermediate level, bridging the gap between cultural and individual factors. Furthermore, the paper showcases the suitability of Q methodology to bring to front individual beliefs as well as group-specific opinions in higher education by discussing the methodological capabilities and challenges as experienced during our study.
Börje Boers is an associate professor at the University of Skövde, Sweden. He got his PhD from Jönköping International Business School in Sweden. His research interest concerns small and medium-sized enterprises and family businesses. Recently, he is working on the effects of crises, such as the Corona-pandemic, on SMEs. His focus in general is on questions of entrepreneurship in these type of companies. He received funding, amongst others, from the Family Kamprad Foundation to investigate the effects of the Corona-pandemic on SMEs.
Organised by the Centre for Sustainable Business the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and supported by ESI student innovation program. The program is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and supported by Printify, SEB Latvia, and Rimi Latvija. Project number: 1.1.1 .3/21/A/008.a.
Discussion moderated by Prof. Arnis Sauka.
Attendance is free of charge.
Activity time: 25.11.22., 15:00-17:00, W32, at Stockholm School of Economics in Riga
It is mandatory for participants to fill in this form: https://forms.gle/o1gTziU1UTWEmCAH6
You are kindly invited to attend the workshop “Towards technological takoffs. Exploring digital technologies diffusion patterns – new frameworks and empirical evidence.” by Assoc. prof. Ewa Lechman.
Ewa Lechman is an Associate Professor of Economics, since 2002 employed at Faculty of Management and Economics Gdańsk University of Technology / Fahrenheit Universities.
The aim of the Open Workshop Series in Business and Management Studies is to promote top-quality academic and applied research in various fields of the social sciences. This is a unique opportunity for sharing knowledge and networking with local and international community members.
In recent decades, the world has witnessed, unprecedented in terms of speed and geographic coverage, diffusion of new information and communication technologies (ICT). This digital revolution pervasively impacts and reshapes societies and economies and therefore deserves special attention and interest.
However, much academic debate not only concentrates on the effects that digital technologies bring, but it also intends to explore the digital technologies diffusion trajectories along with identification of the fundamental determinants of this process.
Discussion moderated by Prof. Arnis Sauka.
Attendance is free of charge.
Activity time: 09.12.22., 15:00-17:00, W32, at Stockholm School of Economics in Riga
It is mandatory for participants to fill in this form: https://forms.gle/uUCnCFHL6AoaCqVZ9
Discussion moderated by Prof. Arnis Sauka.
Attendance is free of charge. The workshop will be held in English!
Activity time: 10.02.23., 15:00-17:00, at Stockholm School of Economics in Riga.
It is mandatory for participants to fill in this form: https://forms.gle/uUCnCFHL6AoaCqVZ9
Maaja Vadi is Professor of Management in the University of Tartu, Estonia. In addition to the role of a professor, she had worked as the head of chair, institute and dean of faculty. She has also conducted academic lectures in the USA, Australia, Japan, Iceland, France, Slovenia, and Sweden. Her main areas of research and teaching are related to various problems of innovation, organizational behavior, organizational and national culture. She has published articles in journals (California Management Review, Technovation, Management International Review, International Journal of Manpower, International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, Journal of Health Organization and Management, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal etc.), edited books (i.e. by Emerald (Dis)honesty in Management: Manifestations and Consequences) and special issues of journals. Maaja Vadi is a member of editorial board of several international academic journals. She has lead and work on various international projects financed by European Commission, and several Estonian institutions and the consultant for many companies and governmental organizations in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, and Finland. Maaja Vadi received a Ph.D in 2000 at University of Tartu.
Education
Business laboratories
The Business Lab is a 14-week (3-month) educational course focused on developing students' full product/service development cycle skills. At the beginning of the laboratory, students form teams and will move together through a developed development path, which includes lectures, workshops, expert presentations. At the end of the course, the teams submit a final report and present in front of a jury, which determines whether the team will be advanced to the program's incubator. The academic recognition of the study course takes place as a transfer of credit points (the total amount of this study course is 4 ECTS).
The laboratory is managed by the founder of Techhub Riga, Viesturs Sosārs.
Activity time and location 14.02.22.-16.05.22., RTA (Rēzeknes Tehnoloģiju Akadēmija), language: LV
The Business Lab is a 14-week (3-month) educational course focused on developing students' full product/service development cycle skills. At the beginning of the laboratory, students form teams and will move together through a developed development path, which includes lectures, workshops, expert presentations. At the end of the course, the teams submit a final report and present in front of a jury, which determines whether the team will be advanced to the program's incubator. The academic recognition of the study course takes place as a transfer of credit points (the total amount of this study course is 4 ECTS).
The laboratory is managed by the founder of Techhub Riga, Viesturs Sosārs.
Activity time and location 04.07.2022. – 14.08.2022., SEB & SSER (Stockholm School of Economics Riga), language: EN
The Business Lab is a 14-week (3-month) educational course focused on developing students' full product/service development cycle skills. At the beginning of the laboratory, students form teams and will move together through a developed development path, which includes lectures, workshops, expert presentations. At the end of the course, the teams submit a final report and present in front of a jury, which determines whether the team will be advanced to the program's incubator. The academic recognition of the study course takes place as a transfer of credit points (the total amount of this study course is 4 ECTS).
The laboratory is managed by the founder of Techhub Riga, Viesturs Sosārs.
Apply here: form
Activity time and location 19.09.2022. – 15.12.2022, SSER (Stockholm School of Economics Riga), valoda: ENG
Education courses
The course lasts 4 weeks. The course is designed to promote equal opportunities and women's involvement in innovation and technology development. During the course, students form teams and develop business ideas that solve global challenges or promote women's representation in the workplace. Through practical exercises, research, homework and gaining valuable feedback, teams will be required to deliver a presentation for assessment. The best teams will be able to continue their activities in an incubator or business laboratory. The course is led by SSE Riga lecturers, Riga TechGirls lecturers. The academic recognition of the study course takes place as a transfer of credit points (the total amount of this study course is 2 ECTS).
Activity time and location March-April, 2023, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, language: TBA
The course lasts 4 weeks. In the course, students will be able to expand their knowledge and gain valuable insight into the principles of social enterprises, as well as social responsibility. At the beginning of the course, students are divided into teams, and the goal will be to choose a social idea or challenge for the rest of the course, at the end of the course, the best teams continue to work in the incubator.
The academic recognition of the study course takes place as a transfer of credit points (the total amount of this study course is 2 ECTS).
Activity time and location 21.11-16.12, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Valoda: EN
During the course, students form teams and develop a business idea based on current digital technology trends. Through lectures, practical lessons, homework, research of other successful business models, and progress presentations, students will have to develop an innovative business idea in this field. Groups with viable product/service propositions will be invited to participate in the incubation phase of the program.
Course will be led by SSE Riga, RTA un LMA lectors.
Activity time and location 27.08.22-20.09.22, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, language: TBA
During the course, students form teams and develop a business idea based on current digital technology trends. Through lectures, practical lessons, homework, research of other successful business models, and progress presentations, students will have to develop an innovative business idea in this field. Groups with viable product/service propositions will be invited to participate in the incubation phase of the program.
The course will be led by SSE Riga and RTA lecturers. The academic recognition of the study course takes place as a transfer of credit points (the total amount of this study course is 1 ECTS).
Activity time and location 05.10.-07.11., Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, language: EN
More information on course: Course outline
It is mandatory to register: https://forms.gle/LJFe2vpszAWwTTVh7
ESI Student Innovation Programme of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga invites to join 3-week course on Social Entrepreneurship. The course starts already on December 1st, 2022 and will be held in-person at the premises of SSE Riga.
The course will be taught by Dr. Paulami Mitra (IESEG School of Management, FR) and Regita Zeiļa (Latvian Social Entrepreneurship Association, LV) + guest speakers.
This course will be based on three main elements:
- • Interactive lessons, complemented by readings (readings will be provided by the professor)
- • Individual work, reflection and opinion sharing through class discussions
- • Group work on several topics inside and outside the class
More detailed information about the course you can find in the course outline. kursa aprakstā.
In order to join the course, the following questionnaire should be filled in. sekojošu anketu.
ESI Student Innovation Programme of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga invites to join a short course on Inclusive Startupreneurship, which starts already on February 21, 2023.
The application deadline for this course is February 13, 2023!
This short education course will be taught by Anna Andersone (Riga Tech Girls, LV) and Alise Gurenko (Riga Tech Girls, LV). Upon completion of the course, students will earn 3 ECTS. The course is open to all students from partner universities (RGSL, RTA & LMA) without entry prerequisites. Students from other Latvian universities must provide proof that participating in the course will not interfere with their studies at the university. Non-student participants must have at least an EQF Level 4 qualification.
Gender balance in entrepreneurial and especially in startup entrepreneurial ecosystems has been historically poor. And even if in recent years the share of female-founded or female-led startups globally is coming closer to 20%, in the investment arena 86% of deals in 2021 across Europe were raised by all-men founding teams.
The course will be implemented face-to-face, it will start on February 21. The course will be taught in English.
More detailed information about the course you can find in the course outline.
In order to join the course, the following questionnaire should be filled in.
Incubator
The incubation program will run for 3 months, in a remotely, with the possibility of using office premises in Riga or Rēzekne. The program is open to different student teams - both teams at an early stage of development and already established start-ups (up to 3 years old) looking for an additional impetus to test and implement products in real market conditions.
By applying for several months program, students will receive:
- Opportunity to participate in lectures and individual mentoring sessions with local and international entrepreneurs and professionals from various industries;
- Opportunity to learn the processes and good practices of idea commercialization;
- Opportunity to apply for a monthly scholarship.
More information about applying to the incubator can be found in the "Incubator" section of the menu.
Post-incubation
The purpose of the post-incubation part (in cooperation with Civitta) is to provide additional requested support to projects that complete incubation until they succeed in either securing further funding, entering another incubation or acceleration program, or establishing themselves in the market. As part of the phase, projects will be provided with a mentor who will further help develop the project's growth.
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Latvian