Expand your business while collaborating with other companies.
Join this year's SEB Growth Program, featuring international and local experts who will guide you through creating customer-centric innovations through collaboration with other companies. This year's program also focuses on fostering a sustainable mindset and leveraging AI opportunities to enhance and diversify business opportunities.
Why participate?
- Discover new ambitions for your company.
- Uncover new cooperation partners and business models.
- Create something unique.
- Learn new ways to think and work from top mentors.
4
modules
up to 15
teams
∞
new cooperation directions
0
Euros
Whom are we looking for to participate?
Small and medium size companies focused on innovation and cooperation
Companies operating for more than 2 years
Companies with an annual turnover exceeding 200,000 euros
Participants with English language skills
Timeline:
- June 18th - Innovation Day
- August - Matchmaking event to find suitable companies in the growth program
- September 5th - Innovation through co-creation
- September 19th - User-driven innovation
- October 3rd - Conceptualisation
- October 17th - Market experiments
- Mid-November - Pitch day with a representative jury
Content of the program will be either in Latvian or English (Depending on the specific workshop, seminar).
Opportunities provided by the programme
Knowledge and practice
Lectures, seminars and practical understanding
- Opportunity to learn and be inspired by other participants through co-creation
- Opportunity to hear and learn from both Baltic and international lecturers. The lecturers will include experts with experience in fast-growing companies, as well as mentoring
- Balancing theory with case studies from start-ups and successful high-growth companies
Experience
Individual mentoring and support of experienced experts
- The programme's lead mentor will help participants succeed and grow by following progress and adapting an individual approach
- Participants have access to individually selected mentors based on needs and business specifics
Business contacts
- Training sessions with all participants of the programme, which will promote the exchange of practical experience of companies and the opportunity to learn from like-minded people
- Digital community platform for like-minded people to share news, seek advice, communicate and discuss news
The main mentor of the programme
Liene Kupča - service design strategist, consultant (Latvia)
Liene is a consultant and advisor with a wealth of experience across public and private sectors in Latvia and the Baltic region. As an author of «Futures Design» course and lecturer in the Service Design & Innovation Master's program—a collaboration between SSE Riga, the Latvian Academy of Art, University of Lapland, and the Estonian Academy of Arts—she brings a unique perspective to organizational change. She excels in steering transformative shifts, enhancing service quality, and fostering innovation with a human-centric approach. Her strategic insight is crucial for organizations that aim to smoothly transition through change and propel innovation.
Other mentors of the programme
Jana Kukk - Co-founder at Rethink, Senior Lecturer at TalTech (Estonia)
Jana specializes in building up and scaling innovation capabilities, as well as in hands-on problem solving concerning internal and customer-facing processes. In a career spanning more than 15 years, Jana has developed a track record as a consultant, in-house innovation lead, start-up mentor and international innovation trainer. Jana has worked with global organizations such as Telia, Daimler, G4S, Volvo Trucks, Santander Totta, Komerčni Banka and others. She holds a PhD in Service Design an is continuing her research in the field at TalTech University. Jana’s also the co-author of the book “Managing Complexity and Creating Innovation Through Design”. She has facilitated more than 100 trainings and programs.
Jussi Hermunen - Managing Director, Digitalist Finland (Finland)
Since 1997, Jussi has been working with emerging business models and digital phenomena. His career has spanned multiple agencies (such as Fjord & Idean), focusing on multinational clients (such as Ericsson & Adidas) and demanding deliveries. A service designer by background, his focus for the past five years has been on business innovation & modern business modelling. This has typically meant collaboration with business functions and processes, and tying different possible ecosystems into the mix if needed. In the context of SEB’s program, he brings in a wider view of the European business landscape.
Arvydas Pleta - Innovation partner at Katalista Ventures (Lithuania)
With a solid track record of over 10 years, Arvydas excels in leading innovation-driven programs, holding roles such as SEB's Head of Innovation and Partner at Katalista Ventures. His expertise in fostering accelerators, hackathons, and bootcamps, along with strategy facilitation for diverse companies, aligns with his dedication to social business principles. Arvydas has mentored over 200 startups and SMEs across various sectors and adeptly led SEB's growth program in Lithuania at the beginning of 2024. He has collaborated with notable entities like Oracle, the European Innovation Academy, UNICEF, Telia, Tele2, Dojus Agro, Elektrum, EIKA, and Žalgiris. Furthermore, he imparts insights on social entrepreneurship and innovation through his podcast, 'Innovators in Action.'
What happens in the program?
- Matchmaking: Finding a suitable partner company for co-creation occurs before the first module.
- First Workshop: Defining ambitions and project focus, exploring open innovation and co-creation methods, and identifying potential challenges with the partner team.
- Second Workshop: Focusing on creating maximum value through co-creation. Teams must formulate a value proposition and scope based on customer insights and outline tasks for the ideation workshop.
- Third Workshop: Facilitating solution design. Teams will compile a general concept of the solution that aligns with viable business principles, technological development, and integrates impact into the core of the business model.
- Fourth Workshop: Preparing the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for launch and assisting teams in preparing pitches. Participants will develop a strategy for the soft-launch (or a business experiment) of the idea, allowing them to bring validated data to the final pitch day.
- Pitch Day: The program culminates in a "pitch day" where all teams present their project overview to a sustainability jury. The top teams may continue collaborating with SEB experts.
In collaboration with
Rethink and Katalista Ventures are partners for the SEB 2024 Growth Program. Rethink is a strategic design agency founded in Tallinn, Estonia in 2019, who are serving clients worldwide. Katalista Ventures is hybrid startup accelerator, based in Vilnius, Lithuania.
SEB Growth Program's goal is to foster innovation and collaboration. Also the program aims to be present at the birth of companies' plans and support the realization of grand ideas and concepts. The program has already been implemented 10 times
SEB is the only bank in Latvia offering such a program to entrepreneurs. Similarly, SEB offices in Estonia and Lithuania also offer the Growth Program to their companies.
Participants' stories
FAQ
During candidate's selection to participate in the program, SEB keeps the right to give first-hand to own customers, however, it is not mandatory to be a SEB client to be invited to participate in the program.
The company's participation cost in the Growth Program is covered by SEB.
The Growth Program for companies consists of two parts. Every other week there will be a 6-8 hour long online seminars, as well as work groups led by mentors and industry professionals. During the weeks between online seminars, Growth Program participants will complete tasks that can take up to 8 hours and sign up for individual mentoring sessions with the respective expert/mentor. Participants will be provided with all the necessary materials and information, as well as access to the online tools that will be used to support the program. Throughout the program participants will receive hands-on support from the program’s team.
When participating in the Growth Program, keep in mind that each team member representing the business will need to devote approximately 8 hours per week to it.
In order to achieve the maximum effect of the program, it is desirable that the company is represented in the Growth Program by a management team or a group of people (consisting of two to five representatives) who are able to innovate and make significant changes in the company.
As part of the program, you will gain knowledge and practical experience on how to develop a successful, customer-friendly product that is easy to scale in the global market. At the end of the program, under the guidance of mentors and experts, you will develop a 100-day development plan that will become the basis for achieving your goals.
Need advice on the program?
Contact our Innovation Manager Ance Abolina by e-mail: ance.abolina@seb.lv or call at +371 20396638
