What is a Hackathon?
Hackathon is an innovative way of including creative individuals into finding and solving the challenges of your company. Our hackathons offer an answer not only to innovation challenges that companies today are facing, but also to their increasing HR challenges. More and more companies are aware that proactive new employees are essential for successful operations in the radically changing business environment. Because young people, or Gen-Z as some may call them, are mostly present and feel quite comfortable in the virtual environment, we have created the Online hackathon next to our traditional (on-site) hackathon.
On-site hackathon
A live event where 50 – 100 external or/and internal competitors are put in teams to create and pitch (present) a new solution to the corporate challenge in only 36 – 72 hours.
Online hackathon
Benefits of a hackathon
Sourcing innovation
A new way of thinking
Promoting diversity and teamwork
Recruiting new talent
Employee retention
PR and Marketing
Why do we do Hackathons?
A hackathon boosts the energy, raises adrenaline and increase creativity of everyone involved. Numerous competitors, who like challenges and being challenged, gather to ideate and create solutions they wish to see in the world. This results in tremendous energy and positive vibe. And trust us – it is contagious!
Can you imagine day 1 of the hackathon, when you don’t know a lot about the sponsor (company giving the challenge) and you probably aren’t familiar with the people on your team, and then you rock the stage with a new – potentially profitable – idea on only the second day? It is a hectic and stressful time that makes the participants move the boundaries of possible and come up with great ideas, analysis and business propositions. It is also a great team building.
This is definitely one of the reasons why we organize and run hackathons, however, there is also a deeper meaning to it. While startups and students like the drive and a chance to solve creative challenges, the story is a bit different for corporates. What we don’t want is to make them lose time and money. Hackathons have to bring added value to the innovation process they run internally. It is way to explore, sketch and test new ideas. Furthermore, the corporate gets a detailed analysis and recommendations for further steps from all competing teams. And further steps sure are important. Hackathons are usually just a beginning of the innovation journey.