Page - 55 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

2 ManagementMethods for Improving the Performance ofDestinationManagementOrganisations via theHackathon AShortDefinition A hackathon is an event in which programmers and others involved in software developmentwork intensively inorder tocreate somethingnewinashortor limited time to contribute to the development of a product (Briscoe andMulligan 2014, p. 2). The term “hackathon” is a combination of the two words “hack” and “marathon”. Hack here means researching software and lines of code. Marathon describes the concentrated and targetedeffort tofinda solution for thedevelopment of software or, in some cases, hardware. Relevance andApplication ofHackathons The number of Hackathon events is growing faster and faster, and as a result, the hackathonphenomenonhas established itself as aneffective approach topromoting innovationwith technologies in a variety of different areas (Briscoe andMulligan 2014, p. 1 ff.). With the proliferation of hackathons, the participation of non-technical expertise such as that ofmarketing experts, business developers and designers has increased (Briscoe andMulligan 2014, p. 4). Facebook is one of the first companies to decide to continuously integrate this phenomenon into its structure. Today, approximately every twomonths,manyofFacebook’smore than 700 engineers meet for a 24-h competition in the company’s offices. Many of Facebook’s trademarks, including the Like button, started as hackathon projects. Thewinners will receive posters in a limited edition, onwhich distinctive phrases such as “InHackwe trust” are shown (Leckart 2012). TheHackathonProcess The hackathons often begin with presentations or discussions so that the partici- pants can recognise and convey a common understanding of the problem. Then ideas and suggestions are collected and examined by teams. The team members have mixed backgrounds and skills and form their team autonomously in the process (Richter et al. 2018).Ahackathoncanusually lastbetweenonedayandone week (Richter et al. 2018: 115;Briscoe andMulligan2014, p. 4;YuehPerng et al. 2017, p. 2). Depending on the level of funding and organisational resources of the organisers, hackathons can take place in a single city, in several locations or simultaneously all over theworld.At the endof the event, a jurywill announce the winning prototypes based on howwell they have tackled the proposed challenges andwhat potential they have to be launched as amarketable product. Thewinners are often rewardedwith a cash prize and/or enrolment in incubator and accelerator programmes.3 The enrolment comes with prestige, which provides access to broader corporate networks and investment opportunities for venture capitalists or 3The GroupMe app is a good example of this. It was created as part of a hackathon and raised $10.6million in thefirst year.Barely one year later, theGroupMeappwas sold toSkype for $85 million (Leckart 2012; Uffreduzzi 2017, p. 3). Digital Entrepreneurship andAgileMethods… 57