Hackathon planning
The ultimate internal hackathon template and planning kit
Get the tools and templates you need to kick-start your next company hackathon.
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Learn how to use internal hackathons as a tool to improve corporate culture, spark innovation, and solve real business challenges.
It's no secret that innovation is necessary for sustained growth. But sometimes finding the time for creative thinking outside of day-to-day work is easier said than done. That's where internal hackathons come in.
Whether you call them company hackathons, corporate hackathons, or innovation sprints, these events have become a powerful tool that leading organizations use to spark ideas, develop internal AI skills, build cross-team collaboration, and accelerate product development. Planning and running these events, and driving real business results from them, has never been simpler.
Related reading: If you're looking for examples of company hackathons that drove measurable results, check out our case study library featuring companies like Okta, Grafana Labs, and JLL.
But what exactly is an internal hackathon, and which type is right for your team? Let's get into it and take a look at examples of internal hackathon ideas.
An internal hackathon is an event where teams in an organization come together to ideate, innovate, and create solutions. It's a collaborative effort where diverse talents and skill sets converge to tackle challenges, brainstorm ideas, and prototype solutions in a condensed timeframe.
The key difference between an internal hackathon and a public hackathon is the audience: participants are your own employees, making these events a direct investment in your team's skills, culture, and product output. Corporate hackathons can range from a focused 24-hour sprint to a week-long company-wide competition with hundreds of participants.
Not all internal hackathons look the same. The right format depends on what your company wants to achieve—whether that's launching new product features, upskilling employees on AI, or simply injecting creative energy into your teams. Here's a quick overview of the most common types of corporate hackathons:
Now, let's dive into each type with company hackathon examples from organizations that have done it successfully:
In an AI hackathon, teams focus on leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to solve specific business problems. Empower your teams to create innovative solutions using cutting-edge generative AI tools.
Bring together tech experts and non-technical enthusiasts alike to contribute and explore new possibilities for your business. Generative AI has changed the world of hackathons, but one of the best ways to leverage these events is by providing participants with technical resources to help them build.
Using a hackathon platform, like Devpost for Teams (DFT), makes it easier to plan these events because it has an AI hackathon template built in with resources to help team members use generative AI for their projects.
Whether it's optimizing processes, enhancing customer experiences, or automating tasks, AI hackathons encourage teams to explore the potential of AI within your organization.
Identity and access management company Okta used an internal AI hackathon to give employees a safe, structured environment to experiment with generative AI. The result was its largest internal hackathon ever, with a 50% increase in participants and more than 25% of all submissions being AI-focused projects.
"Hackathons are generally critical for experimentation because you are able to set up guardrails and do things that you can't otherwise do in your core work. In this specific case, we were able to do that around AI," said Neta Retter, Director of Innovation Programs at Okta.
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The bug smash hackathon is a fun and unique opportunity for teams to focus on identifying and resolving issues within existing products or systems. It’s not just about fixing bugs—it’s about enhancing user experiences and improving product reliability.
Product hackathons center around ideating and prototyping new product features or entirely novel products. Take time to relentlessly focus on your product and spark innovative solutions that solve real customer problems in a time-bound, collaborative event.
These types of hackathons are also great opportunities to support product development, as teams collaborate to brainstorm, design, and create minimum viable products (MVPs) that could potentially disrupt the market or elevate existing offerings.
Open-source software company Grafana Labs runs four company-wide hackathons per year with hundreds of participants and hackathon projects directly fuelling the product roadmap.
"Over a quarter of our hackathon projects have shipped, and there is another 10–15% that have made their way onto the roadmap," said Juan Ruszem, Global Internal Events Manager at Grafana Labs.
To maximize meaningful submissions, Grafana Labs structures each event with two themes: one open-ended and one more defined, which is often centered on AI. "Having two themes ensures that there is a wide variety of submissions and that participants get an option in how they want to tackle what they work on," said Juan.
Skill-up hackathons focus on upskilling and cross-skilling employees. Participants can share their learnings from various workshops, training sessions, and hands-on activities. Gamification is a great way to learn new technologies, methodologies, or tools that can benefit both their individual growth and the company’s goals.
This format has become especially popular as companies work to build internal AI capabilities. A skill-up hack gives employees the hands-on experience they need to experiment with new technology and integrate AI tools.
Fortune 500 real estate company JLL has used internal hackathons as a primary vehicle for building AI literacy across its global workforce.
"Hackathons are a way of learning new skills—last year's hackathon was all focused on GenAI," said Tony Hernandez, Chief Architect at JLL Technologies. "GenAI was very new for a lot of folks and it was a great way for people to get firsthand experience of playing with this new technology and seeing the art of the possible."
JLL has also used skill-up hackathons to broaden participation beyond engineering teams: "We've been trying to bring in more of our business partners into this hackathon world and drive more collaboration—and not just across engineering," said Tony.
Are there features in your app or site that feel clunkier than they should? Motivate your team to solve common user experience problems with a UX hackathon. You can choose to ask participants to look at specific features or web pages or leave it open to see what improvements teams come up with.
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Hackathons are not just for developers. Graphic designers and other creative teams can get involved in competitions that inspire creativity and help push your brand forward. A visual design hack is a great way to tackle branding challenges like designing logos, brainstorming creative marketing campaigns, and redesigning tired brand assets.
Need to crush your team's OKRs before the end of the quarter? Whether you lead a tech team or not, use an OKR hackathon to team up and make a competition out of completing as many goals as possible before the quarter ends.
Sometimes, the most innovative ideas emerge from open brainstorming sessions. Ideathons are all about ideation, encouraging everyone in the organization to contribute concepts, solutions, or strategies to address specific challenges or explore new opportunities.
Whether it's coming up with new feature ideas, process improvements, internal tools they want to build, or anything else that will help move the needle, ideathons are a great way to connect with the people who know the ins and outs of your organization. They're also great for team building and offer a unique activity for teams during company onsite events.
The benefits of company hackathons are numerous and backed by real data from companies that have built ongoing programs. Internal hackathons foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and cross-functional teamwork. They stimulate creativity, accelerate problem-solving, and often produce actionable solutions that positively impact your bottom line.
Here's what corporate hackathon programs actually produce, based on examples from companies running them at scale:
If your organization is looking for fresh corporate hackathon ideas or a model for an ongoing innovation program, these internal hackathon examples show what's possible when companies run them consistently and intentionally.
The easiest way to set up an internal hackathon is with a dedicated tool. Using a platform like Devpost for Teams (DFT) simplifies planning and managing the event by bringing all the features needed to run it into one place. That means that individual hackathon pages have the schedule, project gallery, resources for participants, and the ability to invite participants all in the same place.
Setting up the event is easy, too, with built-in templates that give you a huge leg up when creating the hackathon page.You can actually set up all of the hackathons above in just a few clicks using a DFT template.
You’ll also want to define clear judging criteria—on DFT, these criteria are clearly displayed on each hackathon page, making it easy for participants to understand how their projects will be evaluated.
Looking for a deep-dive on planning hackathons? Download this free guide on how to plan your internal hackathon or explore our internal hackathon planning checklist for a step-by-step breakdown.
Innovation is not a one-time thing. That's why internal hackathons are such a powerful business tool—whether you're running a company-wide AI hackathon, a focused product hack, or an open ideathon, these events spark innovation, drive meaningful change, and grow your business.
Consider exploring these diverse types of internal hackathons to invigorate your teams, fuel creativity, and—as the corporate hackathon examples above show—produce real results that make it into your products and onto your roadmap.
Ready to ignite innovation within your organization? Book a free DFT demo and start planning your next internal hackathon today.
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