The day after — How to implement killer hackathon ideas in 5 important steps
In my last post, I told you about the kick-ass innovation hackathon that our company pulled off. If you missed it, here’s the article about it, in which I break down how you can build your own hackathon by following 6 totally doable steps.
But what happens the day after a Hackathon (beyond cleaning up all the pizza boxes, candy wrappers and wiping whatever that sticky stuff is off your computer)?
You have to follow through on the best ideas from the event, and use the momentum it creates to kick your company’s culture of innovation up another notch.
We didn’t waste any time, and in fact, there are already a number of ideas from the hackathon that were implemented right away. However, some ideas require more resources, and more planning.
No company has unlimited money and time, so you can’t just commit to moving forward with all 50 ideas pitched during a hackathon. You have to choose which ideas to move forward with now, and which ones need to be frozen until a future date.
So now, we’re carrying out the super-important work of deciding what hackathon ideas go in the production pipeline. How are we doing it, and how can you do it? By following these 5 important steps.
1. Create a Post-hackathon Ranking System
Just because an idea ranked high in the hackathon judging, doesn’t mean it automatically goes into production. It’s a good idea to reevaluate each and every pitch in a more in-depth fashion.
We talked about the judging criteria we used for the hackathon in the previous article. Half of every team’s score was based on business value, and the other half was based on how well the idea represented our company principles: Win together, Dare to challenge, Put people first, Own it end-to-end, and Be a pro. Based on this, we chose a top 10, and 3 prize winners.
But we wanted to think about all the ideas again and analyze them more thoroughly with an eye to production. We created a simple, yet really effective ranking system in which we only need to address 2 factors:
- What is the idea’s ease of execution?
- What business impact will the idea have?
We graded each idea on a scale of 1 to 10 for each of these criteria. We then multiplied the 2 scores to calculate the “business potential” of each idea. For example, an idea that could be carried out in just a few days, with limited resources would get a 10 for ease of execution. And one with massive earning potential would get a 10 for business impact. If we multiply the 2 scores in this example, that would give the idea a business potential score of 100.
We didn’t just review the ideas that were voted top 10 in the hackathon. We reviewed every single one of the 50 pitches that were made based on this new, more in-depth criteria.
Why? First of all, because judges can make mistakes (both Beyonce and Justin Timberlake were voted off television talent shows before they were famous!), and secondly, a bad pitch could have obscured a great idea (some people are better than others at public speaking).
In addition, some ideas might require so little effort, that it would be silly not to try to implement them.
2. Involve Key Stakeholders
I sat together with each of the hackathon idea owners, and people from the various departments that would need to be involved to develop the idea, to analyze them more in-depth.
We discussed what resources and effort they would require, and what the potential of the idea would be for the business. This takes serious commitment, but it’s totally worth it. It’s an ongoing process that can take weeks, if not months after the hackathon.
By consulting with the relevant stakeholders and getting more information from the idea owners, we were able to score each idea and calculate its business potential, distilling 50 innovative ideas down to 10–15 ideas that we have to look at even more in-depth.
3. Get Your Hackathon Ideas into Your Annual Budget
It’s no coincidence that our planning of which hackathon ideas would be going forward happened just as Natural Intelligence was budgeting for 2019. This was a major consideration in our decision to hold the hackathon in November. When budgeting comes around a month later, the excitement from the hackathon is still fresh, yet we had time to really dig into the ideas to see what’s ripe and worthy to allocate resources to in H1 of 2019.
When we had our 50 hackathon ideas whittled down to about 15 that had the most business potential, we sat with key stakeholders on what the budget requirements for the idea would be.
For example, if a person had an idea about a new and innovative idea to streamline data collection, you would need to sit with the head of the data department to see what amount of resources it would require to put into practice, what size team is needed to carry it out, and how it sits within the data budget and roadmap. In addition, the department head could help determine if the idea owner is qualified to run the project, or perhaps they’re better off just being a member of the team. Who leads the project going forward, what manpower you need to bring on, how much money you need — these are the nuts and bolts of getting an idea in the production pipeline.
Some of the good ideas you’ve selected are further whittled down at this budgeting stage. They may not fit into the H1 budget, which means they may need to be put on ice for a future date.
Some projects that don’t require a large outlay of resources and effort can already start happening prior to this stage. In fact, 3 ideas from the Natural Intelligence hackathon are already being produced.
But other ideas need more support. This is where you do the precise mapping work of what the idea realization will require (we actually used an awesome spreadsheet for our idea mapping — if you are interested, just leave a message and I will share with you), and then with your recommendations you can go to the management to get backing.
4. Make Innovation Part of the Day-to-Day
Saying that you support innovation is one thing, but actually following through with it, even if you’ve put on a cutting-edge hackathon, is another thing entirely. No matter how good your intentions are of being an innovative company, it’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day of your work and continually push off working on your innovative projects to tomorrow.
In order to avoid this from happening, you need to change the culture — so that your developers and other key players make innovation a regular part of their day-to-day. This is how we keep an innovative culture going.
At Natural Intelligence, we have shown that we are great at growing in a linear fashion, with every move directly contributing to the bottom line and our immediate business needs. Now, we’re trying to reach goals that can only be achieved with exponential growth — so that means we might need to take a temporary step back from optimal business growth to focus on innovations that will take us much higher in the long term.
As the head of innovation, part of my role is to be the orchestrator of this process — to make these initiatives come to life.
The innovative ideas hatched at the hackathon must be broken down into actual tasks, with dedicated resources, that enter the production pipeline. People have to take time for innovation tasks from their busy schedules, with the management’s backing.
Some companies codify this commitment to innovation. Google, for example, followed an 80–20 policy, by which its engineers were expected to spend 20 percent of their time on innovative side projects. This is a pretty extreme commitment to innovation, that even Google has subsequently honed, but the main idea remains: For exponential growth, you need to make time for innovation.
When management is aligned about what innovation projects must be advanced, and they are part of the company’s KPIs — and each team’s KPIs — it can help ensure a healthy culture of innovation.
5. Save Some Resources for Internal Innovation Ideas
During the hackathon, our people came up with all kinds of ideas: some were meant to improve our work in an innovative fashion internally, and some were external-facing, for our consumers; some were purely technological, and others were not technological at all; some were aimed at boosting our business, and others sought to provide other types of value.
For example, an innovation that helps our marketing department more effectively get data so it can run better campaigns isn’t sexy for consumers, but it’s super important. This kind of surefire idea that can’t miss may get preference over an external innovation that requires more resources and may or may not influence the consumer in the way the idea’s owner envisions.
Or how about a cool HR idea that was pitched, called NI Dine. It’s a way to get people from different departments that may not know each other to eat together, and hopefully share ideas. It doesn’t have direct business value, but it’s great for instilling collaboration and team camaraderie.
The impulse might be to just focus on consumer-facing innovations that employ our hefty technological abilities and directly aid our business goals. But we need to take a 360° view of the company when it comes to innovation, and consider ideas that improve our lives here as well.
Keep up the Hackathon Momentum… and Keep Innovating
At Natural Intelligence, I’m lucky enough to be the person responsible for pushing our innovative spirit, and making it part of our culture. Putting on a killer hackathon was not the endgame for us in our innovation efforts, it’s just the beginning! With 3 ideas from the hackathon already in the production pipeline, we can already deem our hackathon a success.
But a successful hackathon is just step 1 of our mission to be a leader in innovation pursuing exponential growth. Plus, if we convince the management to do another hackathon next fall, we’ll get more pizza and beer!
We used the above steps to decide which hackathon ideas we should dedicate resources to, but this system will actually work to evaluate any innovative ideas, no matter where they were hatched. A great idea is just step one, following through takes organization and perseverance. But making sure your innovative ideas don’t just sit around gathering dust is well worth the hard work.
