About Technology Business Center

Who are we?

LIAA Technology Business Center is your opportunity to create your own technology company. If you have a desire to try yourself in business and do not have a team and no one to draw inspiration from, have no idea, but have in-depth knowledge, competence, experience in creating a technology or product, then we, the Technology Business Center, will give you the chance!

At the Technology Business Center (TBC), we welcome young professionals, scientists, or students to help them experiment safely, meet mentors in their field, and provide opportunities to network with like-minded business idea developers. Our absolute priority is to validate the assumptions that are most important to your idea in order to speed up the learning process and increase the potential demand for your idea.

We offer to join the Innovation Academy, where you can gain inspiration and in-depth knowledge for the development of your globally competitive idea, as well as receive 100% financial support for prototyping to validate the viability and potential of your business ideas and technological hypotheses.

The TBC team will implement hackathons, various seminars, idea workshops, networking seminars to attract new business idea developers, promote the creation and development of innovative business, transfer international experience and achieve TBC goals.

TBC, together with its co-operation collaborates, the University of Latvia, Riga Technical University and Riga Stradins University, will organize hackathons for local governments and state capital companies to select new innovative and technologically intensive ideas, create teams, and reach target audiences.

TBC Mission

To become the most efficient platform for validating business and technological hypotheses for early-stage start-ups.

TBC's Vision

Technology Business Center is the first step for the new creator of a business idea.

The aim of the TBC

Technology Business Center is to support and develop business skills, knowledge and entrepreneurial thinking of business developers in Latvian small and medium-sized enterprises with high technological intensity.

What will we do?

By April 30, 2024, the Technology Business Center will attract at least 98 business idea developers for training and support the development of at least 30 prototypes. We will create a co-creation and meeting place for technology creators. Let us gather in the community and unite knowledgeable and willing business developers.

Funding

The total funding for the TBC is EUR 2 000 000 with 100% aid intensity under the Norwegian Aid Instrument. TBC is part of the Business Incubators Department of LIAA.

TBC team

Head of the LIAA Technology Business Centre. As a principal investigator, researcher or data analyst, Andrejs has participated in more than 15 basic and applied research projects, including research supported by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, 7th Framework Programme and Horizon 2020, as well as numerous social and media projects. Since 2008, he has been actively working in the field of text mining, automatic contingency analysis and predictive analytics, using the R (since 2008), Python (since 2015) and Julia (since 2019) programming languages for analysis. His special interests are ethical artificial intelligence and fair algorithms.

Andrejs is a Fulbright Scholar Program alumnus, and was a Baltic-American Freedom Foundation (BAFF) Research Scholar Program and European Social Fund (ESF) Fellowship recipient.

Senior Project Manager with experience in advising SMEs on the implementation of Estonia-Latvia cross-border cooperation projects, developing new joint products and services, as well as experience in communicating the programme and project achievements. The Interreg Estonia-Latvia 2014-2020 programme has financed the development of at least 20 new products and services.

Senior Project Manager in the field of university cooperation and event organisation. Kristīne has a Bachelor's degree in Arts in the specialisation of product design from the University of Liepaja and is currently studying for a Master's degree in Education Sciences in Technology Innovation and Design for Education at the University of Latvia. She has gained experience in business incubator project management, graphic design development, and event organisation.

Senior Finance Project Manager. Marija holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Customs and Tax Administration from Riga Technical University. From 2012 to 2022, her professional experience included developing and coordinating project applications for customs modernisation projects co-financed by foreign assistance programmes, as well as working in the field of international cooperation and European affairs.