What are your strategies to increase the chances of bringing in new ideas in Production after a hackathon? Besides making sure the hackathon is solving for a real business challenge, I'm looking for any gotchas and tips on how to increases the changes for a hackathon to generate great ideas.

Hackathons are great way to democratize innovation. Many of our clients, drive Hackathon’s as a way to signal certain Tech or Domain priorities -- as such, making the funnel of ideas more selective and aligned even before beginning the Hackathon. Clients invest up front in resources, for example GPUs for a Hackathon on Generative AI, as well as having a workshop on how Generative AI tech and potential areas of impact, before the hackathon can help.

Next, using Tools like Mettl, Hackathon Manager, Quill, Ideawake will help you structure the Hackathon from ideas to pilot to production, along with providing uniformity, rapid support and guidance for participants to maximize value and delight.

We also have recommended clients to invest upfront on a “Inner Source” framework which is an open source within the company, so they can harvest the Hackathon prototypes, and increase participation from cross functional departments. We have seen high engagement in organizations that leverage Inner Source and add performance incentives to contributors during Annual perf cycle. Generally, Hackathon prototypes don’t have to be from scratch, and it can always be picked up from Inner Source, tinkered and upgraded.

Based on my experience with processes:

1. Align Hackathon Initiatives with Organizational Goals: Instead of treating hackathons as individual efforts, they should be organized with themes that support the broader goals of the organization or group.
2. Focus During Hackathons: To generate truly innovative ideas, it’s important to avoid distractions. Participating in a hackathon requires dedicated focus and should not be attempted alongside regular job responsibilities.
3. Nurture Promising Ideas: If a hackathon produces good ideas and the participants are passionate, consider assigning a SWAT team to develop a proof of concept (POC) and drive the idea forward. The challenge here is managing the ROI and the potential impact of reallocating critical personnel. A clear strategy is needed to maintain momentum without disrupting other key roles.
4. Streamline Technology Onboarding: When a hackathon POC demonstrates that new technology, like AI, can deliver better results, the process for adopting that technology should be straightforward. For example, onboarding a Large Language Model (LLM) should be an efficient process, and bureaucratic delays should be minimized.