Hackathon 101

What is Agorize?

Agorize is the most comprehensive innovation management platform, supported by a team of experts and community of innovators. For over a decade, we’ve been providing technology powered by a community of 5 million innovators to foster change and accelerate innovation. Our clients and partners worldwide crowdsource, evaluate and develop solutions from startups, employees, developers and students using Agorize.

We’ve helped over 300 global enterprise companies in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific, including Enterprise Singapore, Huawei, Microsoft, LVMH, PepsiCo, Bayer, Schneider Electric, Hitachi, L’Oréal and many more by running their innovation programs.

What is an innovation challenge?

Innovation challenges are a great way to tap into the creative potential of your employees, startups and students. They’re also a great way to get started on new ideas that you might not have been able to develop on your own.

An innovation challenge, or innovation competition, is a competition organized by a company to bring forward innovative solutions. The organizer defines clear objectives and problem statements, after which innovators are invited to submit their ideas and solutions. Proposals can come from startups, employees, students or other talent that is relevant to the topic at hand. Through a process of crowdsourcing and assessing ideas, mentoring participants and developing solutions, the organization will identify the winning proposals that will be implemented. More than 300 enterprise companies have organized innovation challenges with Agorize.

Their results speak for themselves. They’ve reduced go-to-market time with internal teams, fast-tracked the development of niche solutions with the products and services of startups, created long-term strategic partnerships and brainstormed future-proof ideas with students from top universities. Overall, it accelerated their own transformation and made themselves more future-proof.

What is a hackathon?

The term hackathon is a portmanteau of hacking and marathon. They are events organized to fast-track the ideation and development process of technical solutions like an application or software. They are a valuable tool when done successfully, as they can lead to significant progress in a matter of hours or days. Originally, it was teams of computer programmers, tech project managers and UX designers that would participate.

Nowadays, hackathons have become a term used for a broader range of events aimed at building solutions with others in short period of time. A hackathon is usually presented as a competition. A group of mentors and a jury guide and assess participants, and will award those that executed the assignment best.