Acceleration hackathons
Speed up your company’s products and solutions development through hackathons
Published on 16th of February 2024. 2 min read.
What is an acceleration hackathon?
An acceleration hackathon is an event where external teams with selected skills are invited to ideate solutions to accelerate the development of products, services, or processes.
These are the main goals:
Shrink the time to market
Improve the solution's financial performance
Optimise startup costs
Minimise development contingencies
Define a dynamic long-term strategy
The hackathon is preceded by technical training for the teams to acquire all the relevant tools for the hackathon purpose.
Their work is then organised in several sprints, each one of them containing structured activities.
This process is conducted through design thinking methodologies and Genai.
Let’s begin with the importance of strategic networking:
1. Strategic networking and selected actors
In an acceleration hackathon, the actors are carefully selected around the product or the service themselves.
Successful product development relies on the collective skills, knowledge, and technologies of various stakeholders.
An acceleration hackathon provides the perfect platform for collaboration, bringing together individuals, startups, experts, and companies who can connect the dots and accelerate development.
From engineers to designers, marketing specialists to data analysts, each participant brings a unique perspective that can drive innovation and speed up the creation process.
Hackathons aren't just about coding and creating; they're also fantastic networking opportunities.
By connecting with like-minded professionals, you can share ideas, learn from others, and potentially form partnerships that can speed up your product or service production.
2. Training sessions
Training and empowering the hackathon teams is essential for accelerating product development.
Dedicated, hyper-targeted, and technical formation sessions or workshops are held before the hackathon to equip the participants with the necessary skills and mindset for faster ideation.
This not only boosts their competence but also provides them with the actual tools to produce their hackathon deliverables.
Some excellent ways to form the participants are an AI workshop together with a design thinking approach.
3. Experts feedback
Expert feedback is invaluable in the product development process.
Having market and product technology experts at your hackathon means providing fresh insights and objective critiques that can help shape the product or solution for the better.
Their input can spot any potential issues early on, helping you save time and resources in the long run.
The support from experts is provided through several training sessions during the ideation phase of the hackathon.
4. Reduce time to market (TTM)
Time to market (TTM) is the time that it takes to make something ready to be bought.
Getting your product or service to market quickly is crucial.
The hackathon process is engineered for the teams to identify constraints and impediments that could be slowing down the development.
This involves streamlining processes, adopting new technologies, and embracing agile methodologies.
For example, teams can focus on:
Speed up the bureaucratic procedures
Keeping track of the development increments
Integration with other solutions
Market research and studies
Compliance with local regulations
Quality control
5. Explore outsourcing opportunities
Outsourcing is a well-known best practice, especially for software firms.
It is an effective strategy to speed up certain aspects of your product development.
In an acceleration hackathon, you are presented with a pool of external firms and specialists you can delegate specific tasks to.
Whether it's software development, design work, or market research, outsourcing can help you get things done faster and often at a lower cost.
6. Stay up-to-date with industry trends
To stay ahead in the race, keeping up with the latest industry trends is essential.
New technologies, emerging market demands, and competitor activities can all impact your product development.
Use the hackathon as a platform to explore these trends and identify opportunities for innovation.
7. Benefits of acceleration hackathons
An acceleration hackathon is a suitable solution to reduce the time to market of a company’s product or solution and improve its financial performance.
Startup costs are minimised as much as possible together with the contingencies and risks that lie in the development process.
These events have a benefit both in the short and the long run since a wider vision and strategy is also considered in the process.
Let's talk if you need to accelerate your product or service and you’re looking for qualified help to organise your hackathon from an experienced hackathon provider.
