
Promote cross-functional collaboration across engineering and non-engineering teams. The dedicated time that one gets during the hackathon along with the competitive spirit and adrenaline rush can accelerate product development.Įven though all ideas generated at a hackathon don’t get implemented, they can become a good reference list for future road-map discussions. Hackathons help to quickly check the feasibility of some of the ideas that can be taken up in the immediate roadmap. Internal hackathons are the perfect environment for rapidly prototype and test validity and feasibility before full implementation. More experiments allow you to test out a large set of hypotheses and conducting not-so-perfect experiments also means that the cost of failure is low while giving you many insights. The only way you can be consistently innovative is when the pace at which you are generating creative ideas and testing prototypes is higher than the pace at which your external factors are changing. Establish a process of creative ideation. If done well, periodic hackathons can help to Internal hackathons are an excellent way to drive innovation within the company. However, McKinsey says that top companies haven’t fully understood the potential of hackathons as tools of disruptive innovation. Concrete ideas derived from hackathons have helped deliver top-notch products, better customer experience, and greater revenue.Ĭompanies have interpreted the hackathon concept in various ways. With the way the workforce today is connected today, collaborative innovation is easy. Nowadays, companies, both big and small, conduct hackathons to drive innovation. Generally, a dedicated R&D or a specific unit for innovation was assigned to the task.
Traditionally, the responsibility of coming up with innovative products, services, and business models was assigned only to a handful of people within the organization. With the added advantage of crowd-driven ideation, companies can now move fast, reduce the time-to-market, and get ahead in the race. Through hackathons, companies harvest ideas and knowledge to take their technology to the next level. In a way, hackathons complement traditional innovation methods. “If you look at history, innovation does not come just from giving people incentives it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect,” says Steven Johnson, an American author.