Ideas For Hosting Innovation Hackathons

“How do you run your AI hackathons?” It’s one of the questions I get most often from other marketers – at conferences, in DMs, and at every AI roundtable I’ve been part of. Most teams are curious. Some are experimenting. But few are walking out of a room with something real. Here’s how we’ve done it, and why it’s become one of the most energizing things we do as a team. We block one afternoon. Start with a real problem to solve. For example: “How can we generate high-quality copy at scale to power our content engine?” Then we define our goal: Walk out with a working system that gets us to 90%. Not perfect. Just useful. Then we split up into teams. The format is intentionally unstructured, but I’ve noticed three patterns tend to emerge, and they’ve become a helpful blueprint: 1. Knowledge Base: What’s our best source of truth? In this case, we pulled from a Slack channel where Sales drops real customer questions and our SEs respond. It’s raw, high-quality content that rarely makes it into marketing – but it should. 2. Format & Taste: What does “great” look like? This group collects examples of content that feel like us – and uses them to define tone, structure, and what “good” actually means. 3. Systems & Workflow: How do we make this usable every day? This team connects the dots – whether that’s building a custom GPT, plugging into Asana, or making the output part of an existing workflow. We check in a couple times, demo progress, cross-pollinate ideas. And by the end, we’ve built something real in just a few hours. But honestly, the biggest value is what happens after the hackathon. Every time, I see new ideas start to fly. People leave not just with a working system, but with 10 new ways they want to try using AI – in onboarding, in planning, in repackaging content, in campaign ideation. AI becomes less of a concept and more of a tool. And innovation becomes something shared – not top-down. One hackathon builds a solution. A few hackathons build a culture.

Hack Your Team's Mindset: 5 Unconventional Warmups for Innovation Workshops 🧠⚡ Ever run an innovation workshop that felt like trying to start a car with a dead battery? That first 30 minutes determines whether you'll get breakthrough ideas or recycled thinking. Something that I call getting into the “psychology of innovation”. After facilitating several sessions, I've discovered something surprising: the traditional "let's go around and introduce ourselves" kills creative energy before it starts. Your team's brains are still in operational mode—not possibility mode. Here are five unconventional warmups I've tested that rewire neural pathways for innovation in under 20 minutes: 1. The Impossible Question Challenge 🔥 Start by asking questions that have no "correct" answers: "How would you design a restaurant on Mars?" or "What if sleep became optional?" This immediately signals we're breaking free from conventional thinking. 2. The Reality Bending Exercise ✨ Have everyone write down three "unchangeable facts" about your industry. Then challenge teams to imagine a world where each "fact" is no longer true. As Steve Jobs said, "Reality can be distorted"—this exercise trains that muscle. 3. The Reverse Assumptions Game 🔄 List 5-10 core assumptions about your business. Then systematically reverse each one: "What if we charged more for less?" or "What if our customers became our employees?" This shatters mental models almost instantly. 4. The "Yes, And..." Chain Reaction ⛓️ One person proposes a wild idea. Instead of evaluating it, the next person must say "Yes, and..." adding something to evolve it further. Continue for 3-5 minutes. This dismantles our innate criticism reflex. 5. Two-Minute Futures ⏱️ Give everyone two minutes to draw what your industry will look like in 2040. The time constraint bypasses the analytical brain and accesses the intuitive one. The crude drawings often reveal surprising insights about shared hopes and fears. Remember: Innovation doesn't need fancy frameworks—it needs minds free from invisible constraints. These warmups aren't just games; they're pattern-disruptors that help your team escape their mental programming. What's your go-to innovation warmup? Have you tried activities that break conventional thinking patterns? #InnovationWorkshops #CreativeThinking #DesignThinking #TeamFacilitation #Creativity #TransformativeMindset

How Do You Avoid POC Purgatory and Prioritize Innovations with Big Returns? This is a question that comes up in every industry panel—and probably from your finance leaders too. But it’s not a new dilemma. Every time there’s a leap in technology—whether it was Big Data or now with Agentic AI—this question resurfaces. While true innovation can’t be fully predicted, I believe it can be programmed for a higher chance of commercial success. Here are three strategies that have worked for me: 1. Run Purposeful Hackathons Hackathons are everywhere, but too often, the energy fizzles out post-event. Instead, create theme-based tracks that align with your business strategy. Build cross-functional teams (data, domain, design) to ensure ideas are robust and actionable. 2. Commercial Innovation Process As an outcome of hackathon, review all ideas and advance the best ones into a structured innovation process. Allocate seed resources to test these ideas in the market—including willingness to pay. Only after real-world validation should you build business cases and incubate ideas with clear stage gates 3. Celebrate and Scale Success Recognize and celebrate wins across the organization—commercial successes, but also the creation of reusable capabilities and Intellectual Property. This inspires future innovation and encourages ongoing investment. Bottom line: Don’t treat innovation as a one-off event. Make it an ongoing, integrated process. When innovation is embedded into your company’s DNA, you’ll see bigger returns and avoid getting stuck in POC purgatory. How do you keep innovation moving in your organization? Share your thoughts below! 👇