Page - 56 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

multinational companies (YuehPerng et al. 2017, p. 3). In the end, the hackathons turn out to be catalysts for new ideas. These events stimulate people intellectually and creatively. The hackathons also require personalities who know how towork quickly with new people in small teams under time pressure. Although not all participants are necessarily successful under such conditions, these events have proven tobe successful (Briscoe andMulligan2014, p. 11 f.). The cost factormust not be forgotten either. In contrast to permanent jobs in product development, where the financial risk is quite high for the organisations, the cost of failures at hackathons is relatively low or zero (Uffreduzzi 2017, p. 6). Advantages andDisadvantages ofHackathons Advantages anddisadvantages exist for both the participant and the company side. Advantages for the organisers clearlywould be the fast development of ideas and the testing of prototypes, networking and community creation, recruitment and corporate branding (Uffreduzzi 2017, p. 31). In sum, they outweigh the disadvan- tages like the costs and time an organiser must invest. Hackathons also appear beneficial to the participants. Benefits would be the opportunity to learn andwork with new technologies, networkingwithfirms and other participants and the prize that is awarded at the end of the hackathon. Disadvantages would be that the organisers have the right on all ideas generated during the process (intellectual property rights) and that many ideas are not pursued by the organiser. Hackathons as Part of an Open Innovation Strategy to Enhance Entrepre- neurialManagement Behaviours ofOrganisations However, lookingat a singlemanagement tool is not enough todevelopsustainable solutions. Depending on the goal of a hackathon, this is part of an organisation’s holistic innovation strategy. This can be carried out, for example, as part of open innovation,which involves the exchangeofknowledgeacross companyboundaries (Grichnik et al. 2017, p. 385ff). “Open Innovation is the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external useof innovation, respectively” (Grichnik et al. 2017,p. 385ff; Chesbrough et al. 2006). Open innovation can be carried out as an “inbound process”, in which external knowledge is included in the innovation process, for example to carry out external technology sourcing or to integrate suppliers or customers. This also includes the hackathon. The other direction would be an “outbound process” in which knowledge is commercialised externally if it cannot be used in one’s own company, for example licences, technologies, advice. In a “coupled process”, the two are connected to independent organisations such as alliances or joint ventures. For both open innovation as an innovationmanagement method and individual initiatives such as the implementation of a hackathon to be successful for an organisation in the long term, a holistic approach is required that strengthens entre- preneurial action in the respective organisation. A basic orientation can be strategic entrepreneurship as amanagement approach. This approach implements innovation in the organisation to achieve strategic advantages over competitors (Grichnik et al. 2017, p. 385ff; Kuratko and Audretsch 2009). This can be done in at least five 58 N. Richter andD. Dragoeva