Very well managed software organization typically have established process and routines. Following these established processes are imperative to deliver the commercial software on time with the quality requirements. However, improvised innovation quite often falls into the cracks of the large shipments. A few companies is capable of continuously churning out innovative products over the years, one of them is facebook.
How does facebook create so many innovative products? The answer is hackathon. At facebook hackathon, the engineers are temporarily abstained from the daily responsibilities and are empowered with the freedom to pursue the projects that are interesting to them. Innovation is actually a part of human nature, under the right scenario or an innovation supportive environment, the hurdles of innovation are lifted and people become creative.
The benefits of Hackathon model vs traditional grant based model is compared here.
The first is about scheduling, during Hackathon, which typically last no more than a few days, you can make the call whether this project will make the cut. The traditional grant based model typically will take the applicants months even years to get approval.
The second is about communication, in Hackathon Model, the project description is not required, the end result is a demo of the prototype of the project. In grand based model, the grant application itself can be tens even hundreds of pages. The concepts and methods needs to make sense to the grant reviewer in order to pass. In order to increase the chance of getting approved, grant applicants sometime are reluctant to put ideas that require some leap of faith.
Hackathon is a great alternative model to introduce innovation into the product without significant investments.
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