Abhishek Rungta

Firstly, in my context, hackathons are not necessarily technical / coding challenge. It is much beyond. I consider hackathon as – “a small team coming together to solve a problem in a creative or innovative way, in a time constrained environment”.

The core philosophy is:
– small teams (at times competing with each other)
– time constraint (generally between 12-36 hours at a stretch)
– defined problem statement (can be broad or very specific)

It is like a well directed burst of energy. It can be about adding few new features to a software, creating a new tool to improve efficiency, prototyping a new design, or even solving a business problem.

Hackathons have been my favorite tool to make incredibly fast progress. And it is not very difficult to do, and it is real fun for all.

We have used it to:
– create prototypes of innovative solutions in healthcare industry (these prototypes have helped us win deals and impress clients as it showcases the creativity of our team with tangible outcome)

– figure out our marketing plan (evaluating various demand generation options and making choices)

– put together our annual operating plan (when all sales teams came together to make their FY 23-24 plan)

– figure out our positioning and competitive advantage (during our Stanford Seed program)

– identifying key HR initiatives for the next quarter

– identify hidden talent inside the company

When you put constraints of time around a problem, put motivated people together, give them all data/tools/inputs that they need, create an enjoyable environment, align them to shared fate/reward/fun – people fire all guns and come out with unexpectedly amazing results.

And when team members define the solution/roadmap, they are more likely to “use it” or “live by the same” or “execute the plan”.

Keywords to emphasize are: constraint, teamwork, purpose

We will continue to use this powerful collaboration tool to fast track innovation and real team engagement. Have you used hackathons in past to make disproportionate progress? or Do you plan to use hackathons? How?