Bring Innovation in Your Business with Hackathon

In your organization you carry out different types of programs, events and functions right? All these efforts are made to make a growth in the industry. However, have you ever thought about something dynamic and trendy?

What do you think about Hackathons? Have you ever heard about this or practiced it? Once you conduct such a program in your business, you can reap the best outcomes. There are some wonderful benefits of conducting this concept have aloak below:

-        Exploring fresh technologies

-        Driving different types of business innovation

-        Sourcing development programs

-        Forming potential start-ups

-        Branding  of an organization or products

-        Finding out solutions for social causes

-        Analysing data to create predictions

-        Rewarding creative and innovative thinking

For this concept that focus on the output, the objective aim be IP development, strong branding, or even innovation.

Internal hackathon concept confers the below given advantages:

-        Crowdsource ideas from the existing talent of a company

-        Reinforce the values of a company

-        Assist in assessing the company’s current employee pool on the basis of the team collaboration ability, presentation skills and so on.

-        Trigger engagement by concentrating on self-directed and fresh learning

-        Form a diverse and supple work environment by motivating empowered groups and teams

-        Endorse transparency in the management by enabling talent mobility and making u sure a culture of recognition

-        Give employment to people with the right skills and attitudes

This type of platforms can be used as an effective innovation management software and work as platforms to interact and ideate for developing interesting products and procedures. Such platforms only take the individuals and organizations towards growth.

What really this concept is?

A hackathon is a competitive program or event wherein teams of developers, designers, and subject matter professionals collaborate to form solutions for a particular problem inside a defined time frame. The aim is to construct a working prototype in shape of a website, an application, or a robot to solve an assumed problem. It is also called as hack fest or hack day, the program gives participants the chance to collaborate, network and productize their ideas.   However, the most famous form of a hackathon is an offline or physical one. It generally lasts for twenty four hours and it is generally scheduled on the weekends. Participants are motivated to come up with innovative solutions to solve problem statements for particular themes mentioned in the hackathon.

For the participants and attendees, a hackathon is an ideal platform to explore fresh technology, work on a project they are dedicated about, and construct a working proof-of-concept in a short period of time. It is also a chance for them to collaborate and network with like-minded people who are determined and passionate about constructing products. Hackathons are no longer limited to just the developer community. Anyone or anybody who can contribute to forming a product can take part in a hackathon. It is like a rich platform for learners and developers and overall professionals.

Organizations usually conduct this concept to encourage innovative problem solving, drive innovation, and construct brand awareness. Various companies carry out internal hackathons inside their organization to involve their employees and endorse a collaborative work environment. Apart from this, external hackathons are helpful for firms in finding and recruiting innovative and talented professionals at a lesser cost than conventional recruiting methods. Instead of going through humdrum rounds of interviews, firms can assess potential candidates by their overall performance in a hackathon. Relying on their objective, companies might thus opt for either an external hackathon or internal hackathon. It is always as per the convenience of the organization.

In this present day digital era, the success of a business depends on its capability to sustain innovation. To fulfil growing customer expectations and beat the growing competition, companies should innovate fast and construct fresh features to enhance their product or service. The hugest advantage that a hackathon caters is a structure to scale creativity and build fresh features. Concrete ideas resulting from hackathon can help the organizations provide better customer experience and enhance revenue.

Conventionally the responsibility of coming up with creative and innovative services, products and business models was associated only to a handful of individuals and people inside the organization. Usually, a dedicated R&D or the Innovation Department is given the responsibility of the task. In this present era, companies, both big and small carry out hackathons to trigger innovation. This concept is becoming really popular amidst both small and big organizations. Whether a start-up firm or a big multi-national company; everybody is considering this concept of innovation, learning and exploring.

Businesses are scaling innovation by reaching out to everybody inside or outside the organization as different from depending on only a handful of people. With these platforms, organizations can now easily find out solutions, from both internal and external spectators, with negligible investment of effort time, and capital. With such an approach, the team mainly responsible for innovation works with the whole hackathon crowd to manufacture ideas, form the proof of concepts and then carry out the shortlisted ideas for growth and development. By catering a structure to develop ideas, a hackathon mainly make it convenient for companies to implement innovation.

In case you peep into the history, innovation does not emerge just from giving people incentives but it also derives from creating environments wherein their ideas can link up. Of course, when there is a program or an event where people from different places, organizations and backgrounds blend for discussions and learning; outcomes are destined to be innovative only. In a way, this concept compliments traditional innovation methods. Via this concept, companies harvest knowledge and ideas to take their technology to the finest levels. With the additional advantage of crowd-driven ideation, firms can now move quickly, diminish the time-to-market, and stay ahead of increasing competition.

Thus, you should ponder over this concept of Hackathon. It is going to give you new horizons to grow and you can make the best developments!