MasterTech – an intense hackathon-style event – students, Coles Group, and technologists worked together at Cisco Live Melbourne to explore how AI can improve customer experience– – and how people learn to think, collaborate and create alongside it.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is now embedded in everyday business systems, from customer service to supply chains. Yet as AI accelerates, a deeper challenge is emerging – how people learn to work with intelligent systems without losing judgement, creativity, or human connection.
That challenge sat at the centre of MasterTech 2025, a five-day, hackathon-style design sprint created and led by La Trobe University and hosted at Cisco Live Melbourne. Sponsored by Coles Group, the program brought together 21 students from seven Innovation Central hubs across Australia and Singapore to tackle a live industry brief: reimagining customer experience in retail using data and AI.
Jeff Jones, Director of ICM and MasterTech creator, says the event is “intentionally intense”. “Students work in small, cross-disciplinary teams, moving rapidly from ideas to working concepts,” he says. “Over just a few days, they test assumptions, pivot when ideas fail, and build demonstrable prototypes, all while collaborating across locations before converging in Melbourne for Cisco Live. They learn to build prototypes that work, a business case to explain why and another intensive program of rehearsing, pitching, and presentation skills to make sure the ideas come across really well.”
For Coles Group, the value lies in seeing how emerging talent approaches real-world complexity under pressure.
“The thing that always amazes me is we spend a couple of sessions with the students going over different ideas and then we come back a weekend later, and they’ve got working concepts,” reflected Dom Maeorg, Incubation and UX Manager for Data and AI Product at Coles Group, after returning as a mentor for a second year. “They’ve already brought it to life in such creative ways, in such a short amount of time.”
That speed is by design. MasterTech mirrors the realities of contemporary innovation environments, where teams must balance technical possibility with user experience, organisational constraints, and ethical considerations. Students are supported by mentors from La Trobe, Cisco, Coles, and the National Industry Innovation Network (NIIN), but they are not given answers. Instead, facilitators help teams refine their thinking, challenge assumptions, and stay focused on impact.
From competition to capability-building
What distinguishes MasterTech from a conventional hackathon is its emphasis on how participants think, not just what they build. Early in the sprint, teams are asked a guiding question: what do you want people to think, feel or do as a result of your work? Technology follows intent – not the other way around.
Mr Jones says this shift is critical as AI becomes more capable.
“AI is already amplifying what people can do, but it’s also testing how we think and collaborate at work,” he says. “MasterTech is designed to build new cognitive habits – adaptability, critical thinking and collective intelligence – so people learn how to work with machines without surrendering human judgement.”
Over the course of the program, collaboration replaces hierarchy. Curiosity replaces certainty. Teams learn to move fluidly between human-centred design and machine-enabled insight, often discovering that the most valuable outcomes sit at that intersection.
The winning team from Innovation Central Canberra exemplified this approach, developing a concept focused on customer experience, loyalty, and community impact. Their solution demonstrated how AI-enabled systems can support retail outcomes while remaining grounded in human needs and values.
Held in a hybrid format for the first time, with teams collaborating across cities before showcasing live at Cisco Live’s World of Solutions, MasterTech also highlighted how distributed innovation can work at scale. Students presented their work to thousands of attendees, positioning their ideas on a national – and international – stage.
For ICM and its partners, MasterTech is more than a student competition. It is a practical demonstration of how industry, universities, and technology platforms can come together to accelerate innovation, develop future-ready talent, and explore what meaningful work looks like in an AI-enabled world.
As Mr Jones puts it, the outcome is not just prototypes, but preparedness.
“MasterTech is a rehearsal for the future of work – a place where teams discover that intelligence is collaborative, innovation is co-created, and technology’s highest purpose is to make us more human, not less.”
As part of the program, the winning team from Innovation Central Canberra received a $10,000 prize through Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program, supporting continued development of their concept with Coles Group beyond the showcase.
