An Innovation Toolkit Tailored for Edtech

Who We Are

Based at Trinity College Dublin, Learnovate is a global center of excellence for EdTech research and innovation. With over 15 years of experience and backing from the Irish Government through Enterprise Ireland, we bring together a multidisciplinary team of experts in innovation, learning science, cognitive science, user experience, technology, and industry specialists. We partner with educators, trainers, and learning technology companies to innovate, evaluate, and scale next-generation supports for impactful skills and learning development.

Cutting Through the Innovation Noise

Bringing new ideas to life is rarely a straight line, and the sheer volume of general innovation methodologies can easily lead to confusion. From Lean Startup and Agile to Design Thinking and Jobs-to-be-Done, organisations face a dizzying array of frameworks—each with its own rules, tools, and promises. Choosing the right approach or attempting to blend them without a clear strategy often leads to process paralysis and wasted resources. To solve this, Learnovate undertook a dedicated research program to evaluate these competing methodologies. The result is a tailored toolkit that identifies the optimal mix of innovation methods specifically adapted to meet the unique needs and fast-paced demands of the EdTech sector.

Step 1: The Problem Space

Our research led us to synthesize key elements from existing methodologies into two core pillars essential to any EdTech innovation: the problem and the solution. Aligned with Albert Einstein’s famous philosophy— “spend 55 minutes understanding the problem and 5 minutes solving it” —our framework heavily prioritises deep problem discovery. Utilising a Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) approach, we map out who experiences the friction, measure its severity, and identify the specific goals target users are struggling to achieve. Investing time here ensures solution development is grounded in real needs, preventing EdTech teams from wasting resources on assumed pain points that end up being insignificant—or non-existent—to their actual audience.

Step 2: The Solution Space

When transitioning to the solution space, the insights gathered from our problem discovery serve as our guiding compass, defining exactly what the solution must resolve. To generate truly innovative ideas, we draw on Design Thinking tools engineered to break conventional mindsets. When asked to generate “wild ideas” on the spot, most people either clam up or fall back on pre-existing assumptions. To overcome this, we utilise structured individual ideation techniques—such as alphabet thinking and opposite thinking—which act as cognitive scaffolding, pushing participants to explore unexpected possibilities. We gather these individual contributions into a collective ‘idea shopping cart,’ where the team collaborates to curate, evaluate, and prioritise the solutions capable of driving the highest impact.

Step 3: Rapid Prototyping

With a deep understanding of the problem and a clear direction for the solution, our next step is to rapidly build a ‘conversational prototype.’ Designed to help us ‘get out of the building,’ this low-fidelity artefact allows us to test concepts directly with target users and stakeholders. Depending on the project, it might be a simple storyboard, paper wireframes, or a basic user-flow schematic—just enough fidelity to gather meaningful feedback before investing time and effort in tech design and development. In recent years, we have found that Gen AI is a very helpful tool in generating such prototypes, but we caution that we are testing the concept, not the prototype. This marks the start of a cyclical co-creation process to impactful solutions, looping back in with stakeholders along the development cycle.

Adapting for Digital Transformation

Beyond new product development, we have also identified and developed other innovation tools as appropriate for different situations. For example, when innovating with a new idea, most aspects are ‘unknowns.’ However, when looking at digital transformation, we are transforming something that is already providing value, where the job is usually to understand how to improve efficiency, effectiveness, or both. In these cases, we deploy a combination of user journey mapping and service design blueprints to provide an end-to-end view of the current ‘as-is’ experience. This holistic view helps identify friction points and prioritise our efforts toward digital transformation.

Pragmatic Impact vs. Innovation Theatre

Innovation can often be seen as dense and difficult to comprehend, a near-mystical activity that must be performed by specialists. At its worst, this leads to ‘Innovation Theatre,’ where the activities rather than the outcomes become the focus, wondering if everyone ‘enjoyed’ it. We do not buy into this approach; innovation is a pragmatic discipline that must produce impactful outcomes, good or bad. It has rules that should be applied rigorously but can be deployed by anyone—it is a ‘practice sport’ where the more you deploy it, the better you get.

At Learnovate, our dedicated team of EdTech innovation experts has supported hundreds of organisations over the last decade—including start-ups, SMEs, multinationals, government initiatives, and European projects. Through Erasmus+ initiatives, keynotes, and hands-on work, we continuously refine our toolkit, most recently investigating the potential support Gen AI tools can bring to our services.

Proven Success: The European Digital Education Hub

In June of this year, Learnovate supported the European Digital Education Hub (EDEH) Squad focused on “EU EdTech for Sovereign Education Futures.” The workshop ran over three sessions—one online and two in-person in Brussels—bringing together 48 participants. Leveraging our toolkits, we gained deep insights from policy-makers, the EdTech industry, and educators. This laid the groundwork, context, and direction for the squad’s work through November, with findings and recommendations set to be discussed at OEB in December.

Our methods resonated strongly with participants, as one higher education representative from Spain shared afterwards:

“The method you facilitated turned out to be a learning experience in itself: the discipline of moving from user, to job, to prototype, to test in a single day forced a clarity of thinking that I rarely get in slower formats. I came in with my own analytical baggage and left with a sharper way of articulating it. Looking forward to what the squad builds over the coming months.”

Join Us in Berlin!

In the pre-conference workshop at OEB this December, we are delighted to offer a workshop experience based on the EDEH workshop. You will work with a focused challenge linked to educational sovereignty, collaborate in small groups to get hands-on experience using our tools, and walk away with the ability to leverage them in your own situation.

We hope you can join us and look forward to seeing you in Berlin in December!

Written for OEB 2026 by Dr Peter Gillis, Innovation Team Lead, Learnovate