Invention Development. The Hackathon Method
Maciej Ryś
Abstract
Over last few decades, innovation became one of the most meaningful resources for successful management. In order to spark invention, the first step of innovation, a number of methods have been introduced including hackathon. This paper evaluates 14 hackathons over a period of over 3 years from various perspectives and with an ethnographic approach and different research methods– observation, 36 semi-structured interviews and netnography. Material analysis has been performed with methods of grounder theory, as well as machine learning as a triangulation method. As a result, types and approaches of hackathon, together with a new empirical definition, ways of how this method mitigates drawbacks of brainstorming and a unique relationship between concepts of preparation difficulty and likelihood of desired invention at the hackathon have been introduced and presented.