How can hackathons accelerate corporate innovation?

Authors: Myrna Flores, Matic Golob, Doroteja Maklin, Martin Herrera, Christopher Tucci, Ahmed Al-Ashaab, Leon Williams, Adriana Encinas, Veronica Martinez, Mohamed Zaki, Lourdes Sosa & Karina Flores Pineda

Abstract: In recent years, the way corporates innovate has changed significantly. Going from ‘behind closed doors’ innovation to open innovation where collaboration with outsiders is encouraged, companies are in the pursuit of more effective ways to accelerate their innovation outcomes. As a result, many companies are investing to create more entrepreneurial environments, which not only empower employees to proactively propose and test new ideas, but also reach beyond company walls to involve many others in the co-creation of new solutions. In this paper, we outline the most notable benefits of hackathons from the perspective of large organizations, and present the benefits and a methodology for organizing hackathons, i.e. competition-based events where participants work in small teams over a short period of time to ideate, design, rapidly prototype and test their ideas with a user-centric approach to solve a determined challenge. This paper also provides a brief insight into the CEMEX Hackathon, which was organized following the aforementioned methodology.