Page - 60 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

An examination of the ThüCAThon leads to the following results: • This hackathon led to many ideas within a short time. Some of these were followed up and completed with specific details during the 24 h. The ThüCA- Thonhasproven tobeamethod that canbehelpful for the rapiddevelopmentof data-driven projects in tourism. • Many different actors were integrated into the network, making the whole undertakingmore productive. The involvement ofmany different organisations andpeoplemade theproposals verydiverse andheterogeneous.Theparticipants brought in their specific knowledge, and if theywere lacking expertise in other areas, this was balanced by their motivation and creativity. This type of con- structiveevent ismoregoal-orientedwhenvariousactorsare integrated intosuch anetwork, because themixtureofdifferent disciplinesmeans that the confluence of the individual specialist qualities in the groupsmakes itmuch easier to solve complex questions. Especially due to the short stages and fast rounds of eval- uation, both the work dynamics and the motivation remain consistently high over the entiredevelopmentprocess. Ingeneral, it canbe said that thehackathon format offers the opportunity to intensively connect large network structures within a short time and with manageable effort. The role of mentors in a hackathon should not be underestimated, because their presence at ThüCAThon has proven to be an important detail. They helped with any questions or deci- sions that arose within the groups, because they knew exactly which tourism strategy andwhich operational goals are pursuedbyThüCAT. In thisway, they madeadecisivecontribution tokeeping thecreative teamsoncourse inall phase of their work, thus guiding the final results towards the goals of the organiser. • The organisers saved costs thanks to the many ideas collected and prototypes createdwithin24 h.As alreadymentioned in the case study,more than20 ideas were collected at ThüCAThon,mostly frompeoplewho did not get anymoney for it, apart from the three awardwinners at the end.Of course,money is spent on theorganisationof suchanevent, but considerable results are achieved, from startingwith the idea, continuing through the collaborationof IT,marketing and tourismexperts to creatingaprototype.All of these componentswouldburdena company’s budget significantly in conventional, i.e. closedprocesses, especially if theyhad topay several teams at once.However, according to theparticipants, the prizemoneywas not theirmain reason for participating in theThüCAThon, instead, curiosity about this new construct and the opportunities for networking were the strongest motivations. • The organisers very quickly received expert and constructive feedback for the beta versionofThüCATfrommanydifferent specialists at the current time.The hackathon is not only a good approach for collecting ideas. A completely new system, namely ThüCAT, was shownwith its capabilities in the beta version. This enabled the participants to get to knowThüCAT and tomake their com- mentsor recommendations.TheThüCATwassuppliedwith thedata, itwas then checked to see whether it could workwell, and finally the first product devel- opments in the form of application prototypes were made available based on ThüCAT. 62 N. Richter andD. Dragoeva