How hackathons innovate

Michele Erba

Hackathon Expert

How external hackathons drive company innovation

Alright, so, in theory, if you’re here, it means you have an idea of what a hackathon is, and you’re investigating a little more.

In this article, we’ll try to provide some more specific examples of how external hackathons can help your company to innovate.

Cross-pollination of ideas with fresh perspectives
Agile problem solving
Accelerated prototyping
Technology testing
Idea validation
Product development acceleration
Process optimisation
Direct impacts and benefits for your company

Let’s begin with how hackathons can bring fresh external contamination into your company:

1. Cross-pollination of ideas with fresh perspectives

Hackathon events are conducted in the name of open collaboration.

Sharing knowledge is encouraged between participants, external experts, mentors, partners, startups, and stakeholders.

These people have different backgrounds and come from multiple disciplines and experiences.

Companies are therefore provided with external resources and expertise that may not be available internally.

What is the goal of creating such an environment? Well, solving complex challenges.

This external contamination can also provide access to new technologies, methodologies, processes, and approaches.

2. Agile problem solving

The agile nature of hackathons encourages rapid and agile problem-solving.

This approach is used when in urgency to solve a specific problem.

Teams work against the clock to generate solutions that are particularly beneficial for addressing urgent business challenges, adapting to market changes, or responding to unforeseen disruptions.

3. Accelerated prototyping

The time constraints of hackathons (usually in the span of a weekend) push participants to rapidly prototype and develop minimum viable products (MVPs).

This quick turnaround time encourages experimentation and allows teams to test ideas and concepts in a short period, accelerating the innovation process. In short, you get a great MVP very quickly.

4. Technology testing

Companies can use hackathons to provide external teams with their technologies and tools to be tested and assessed by a fresh but competent audience.

This process quickly identifies gaps and lacks in the company’s product. In case you’d like to know more, we wrote a specific article about this topic.

5. Idea validation

If you already have some ideas in your bucket, you might “throw” them to carefully selected expert participants to be validated in a “close-to-real-world” environment.

Also, for this case, there is a very short turnaround due to quick learning cycles, ultimately generating a hasty but solid idea validation process.

You might think that this comes with a cost since usually “I want it now” means “I’ll pay more for it,” but this is not the case.

In fact, this is a very cost-effective validation compared to traditional methods.

In the long-term, the investment from the company is by far reduced.

6. Product development acceleration

Hackathons have a specific characteristic: intense focus.

It’s a specific moment in time when all the energies are put towards a defined goal, accelerating the development of a product, process, or solution.

Also here, external resources and the hackathon network play a key role.

A best (and good) practice is to organise training before the event.

These live sessions can take place in the form of webinars, workshops, or hands-on laboratories, held by selected external experts or specialised companies.

These sessions not only serve as a coaching, guidance, and formation exercise but also as a feedback platform.

The result of this process is often a reduced time to market, which is achieved both by the new skills, tech, and approaches learned by the employees and also by outsourcing them, depending on the company's strategy.

Only by following this process, companies are capable of staying up-to-date with industry trends.

We have an in-depth article specifically on this matter.

7. Process optimisation

A similar approach can be followed to achieve process optimisation.

Streamlining internal processes is a perpetual goal for businesses aiming to enhance efficiency.

Hackathons focused on process innovation can lead to the identification of bottlenecks, the introduction of automation, and the implementation of technologies that improve workflow.