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How to setup and run a successful hackathon
Setting The Objectives Of A Hackathon
The main objective is to generate high-value actionable business ideas and product concepts. But a hackathon should also boost the innovation culture and further establish the idea-sharing, effective collaboration and creativeness driven by enthusiasm towards a shared goal.
Employees have a great opportunity to discover technologies, teams and demonstrate their skills and talents outside their typical job description; Corporations have the opportunity to identify talent, experience powerful teams being setup and capture valuable feedback.
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Key Ideas
Community Creation
Hackathons can activate a tech-savvy community to rally around a cause and help. It often fosters the desire in the participants to keep working on the projects after the hackathon is over t...
Developer Engagement
Hackathons can expose a community of developers to new technologies while the technology providers get in-depth feedback and the knowledge of watching how their tech is used “in the wild.”
Recruiting
Hackathons allows companies looking to hire to see beyond a resume of potential employees. A well themed hackathon identifies people who have a common passion with your organization and expose their behavior through the range of experiences an employee faces while working.
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Key Ideas
Hackathon
... is a term used in reference to innovation jams and describes an event that pools eager entrepreneurs and software developers into a confined space for a day or two and challenges them to inn...
A Good 24-hour Hackathon
- Centers on the customer process or journey and supports a clear business target.
- Involves employees from all relevant areas to find different ways of working a problem.
- Challenge participants to reimagine an existing method to try to find the most efficient way to improve the customer experience.
- Sessions start with ideas but end with a working prototype.
- Output includes a clear development path that highlights all the steps needed to accelerate production and implementation.
- The hackathon concludes with a presentation to senior leaders, including a real-life demonstration of the new prototype and a roadmap of IT and other capabilities needed to bring the final version to market.
- Once the teams agree on what to do, those responsible for execution create a virtual model that the group vets, refines and re-releases in continual cycles until the new process or app meets the desired experience criteria.
- Management prevents the dissipation of enthusiasm and energy created on the hackathon by placing new processes to sustain it.
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Key Ideas
Benefits of workplace collaboration
Employees can share resources, swap perspectives, and boost each other’s creativity.
Collaboration allows us to capitalize on the collective knowledge and expertise of our people, whil...
Downsides of collaboration
Collaborations can be unproductive, time-wasting, and a strain on top employees.
Collaborative organizational structure can drain people’s time and resources, wherein employees are “emailed to death and meetinged to death."
For effective collaboration...
... (or delegation), it helps to know where everyone’s expertise lies.
Make sure your employees get to know each other, whether that happens through group lunches, coffee breaks, or informal social events. This also builds trust — a vital element for successful collaboration.