A hackathon is a time-limited intensive sprint in which teams work together on a concrete problem and develop a working result. The term combines "hacking" in the sense of creative problem-solving with technology and "marathon" as a symbol of concentrated endurance. Typical hackathons last 24 to 48 hours.
You have been planning for months. The project is still at the starting line. Everyone is on board, nobody actually has time.
In meetings, people plan. In hackathons, people build.
That is the core of it. And anyone who has experienced what a good team can pull together in 48 hours will seriously ask themselves why not every bigger project starts this way.
What does hackathon actually mean?
The term combines "hacking" and "marathon." Hacking not in the sense of breaking in, but in the original sense: working creatively and unconventionally with technology. Marathon stands for endurance, the intensive concentrated work over a limited period of time.
A hackathon is therefore an intensive, time-limited development sprint in which teams work together on a concrete problem. The result is not a concept and not a slide deck. It is a working prototype, a solution, something you can actually touch.
What does a classic hackathon look like?
The classic hackathon has an organiser, often a company, a university or a community, who invites different teams. Participants receive a topic or challenge, work on it intensively for 24 to 48 hours and present their results to a jury at the end.
The jury evaluates based on criteria like creativity, technical implementation and practical relevance. There are winners. There are prizes. There is applause.
What emerges is sometimes surprisingly good. Teams who had never met before build solutions in two days that companies internally have not managed in months. The reason is simple: no hierarchy, no overhead, no "this needs to go through three departments first." Just the problem and the people who want to solve it.
How we use hackathons
We do things a little differently.
For us, a hackathon does not have to be a competition. No jury, no ranking, no applause at the end. What it needs instead is the right constellation: a few people who bring real technical and specialist knowledge and genuinely want to implement things, and the right people from the company who have time to properly engage with the topic.
That is the decisive factor. Not the technology. Not the budget. But the commitment. Those who approach a hackathon half-heartedly get half-finished results. Those who are really in it, who step away from day-to-day business for 24 or 48 hours and genuinely engage with a problem, come out with something that did not exist before.
Sometimes 24 hours is enough. Sometimes it takes 48. That depends on the problem, not on a fixed format.
What makes a hackathon so special?
It is not the intensity. It is the concentration.
In a normal project environment there are meetings about the meeting, alignment loops, approval processes, parallel priorities. Everyone works on several things at the same time. Nobody is really fully present.
A hackathon does exactly the opposite. For a clearly defined period of time there is only this one problem. Everyone in the room works on it. Decisions get made immediately because the person who can decide is sitting right next to you. Feedback comes in minutes rather than weeks.
The result: teams sometimes achieve in 48 hours what takes six months of regular project work. Not because they work harder, but because nothing is in the way.
Who does a hackathon make sense for?
For anyone who has a concrete problem and knows it can be solved, if someone finally has real time for it.
That could be internal processes that nobody has touched in years. An idea for a new tool or product that keeps appearing on the agenda but never gets started. A technical challenge that always feels too complex in the day-to-day.
What it takes: a clearly defined problem, the right people in the room, and the will to actually start.
Ready to find out what is possible in 48 hours?
If you have a problem that has been on the agenda too long, talk to us. Not for a proposal. But to find out whether a hackathon is the right format for your problem.
We have deliberately adopted the format as part of how we work, because we know what is possible when commitment and competence meet a concrete problem.
Great things in a short time do not come from more planning. They come when the right people finally start.
— Robert
