Utilizing Hackathons to Foster Sustainable Product Innovation - The Case of a Corporate Hackathon Series

Abstract

In order to remain competitive, software companies need to continuously develop new or advance existing products. In recent years, they have increasingly turned towards organizing hackathons for this purpose. During such events, teams of employees engage in intense collaboration over a short period of time to complete a project that is of interest to them. While research on hackathons has been growing steadily in recent years, there is a lack of studies focusing on the continuation of hackathon projects after an event has ended in particular in a corporate context. Our study aims to contribute to existing work in this area by focusing on a corporate hackathon series that was organized by a medium-sized Eastern European software company. Our findings support and extend prior research by indicating that teams consisting of members who aim to improve their skills, that engage in project focused preparation, focus on developing a functioning prototype that is aimed at the current customer base, easy to integrate, and related to existing products during the hackathon, had their projects continued in the case we studied. Moreover, we found indications for organizational commitment in the form of resources to continue a project after an event to predicate project integration. We also identified potential barriers towards this resource allocation related to prioritization and prior commitments of the organizational unit that was projected to continue a hackathon project after the event in the case we studied.