Business impact
5 Reasons private hackathons drive customer engagement
Here’s how private customer hackathons reduce churn and drive revenue growth.
Read more
Join a hackathon
Host a hackathon
Resources
Transform your business in 2025 with internal AI hackathons.
Over the last two years, companies raced to invest in AI. Now, the challenge is turning those investments into real business value. While the potential of AI is enormous, many organizations struggle to scale their AI initiatives and unlock its full potential.
The solution? A hands-on, iterative approach—and that’s where internal hackathons come in.
Many organizations have invested in AI but struggle to generate continued business impact. Common barriers holding companies back are rigid product cycles, siloed teams, and limited opportunities for hands-on learning.
To overcome these challenges, organizations need to get hands-on with AI—fast. Hackathons offer a structured, time-bound environment where teams can explore AI applications, test their ideas, and build prototypes.
Hackathons help companies unlock the full potential of AI by:
Leading organizations are already using hackathons to turn AI potential into tangible outcomes. Here are some of the most impactful ways hackathons drive AI transformation:
To break free from innovation gridlock, teams need dedicated time and space to experiment with AI—something that traditional project cycles don't always provide.
"Hackathons are critical for experimentation because you’re able to set up guardrails and do things that you can't otherwise do in your core work," said Neta Retter, Okta.
Neta Retter, Director of Innovation Programs at Okta explains how internal hackathons help companies experiment quickly and save costs. "We’ll give folks very short access to new AI tools in a sandbox environment,” she said. Neta added that Okta uses hackathons as a way for participants to show proof of what to build and how to build.
“Then we can decide which tools we want to buy later because enterprise licenses to these tools are expensive and risky. Whereas if you’re using the tools with fake data, you can create the value by leveraging hackathons.”
While innovation teams often struggle with limited resources, hackathons result in high-quality projects that ultimately make it onto product roadmaps.
Finastra, a global fintech company, experienced this direct pipeline to production. "We had about seven or eight projects make it directly to roadmap in our last hackathon," said Chirine Ben Zaied, Head of Innovation at Finastra. "That was a really great achievement."
Toyota's success story is perhaps even more striking, showing how hackathons can influence major product decisions.
"Toyota was able to announce a new feature in one of our vehicles that was the winner of our first-ever hackathon,” said Trey Spyropoulos, Manager of Communications and Organizational Effectiveness at Toyota. “Hackathons are something where you can tangibly see that your work produces an end result."
“We saw prototypes being implemented to production just a few weeks after the hackathon,” said Nico Wyss, SAP.
SAP does this through its private customer hackathons. “Each customer has an SAP expert at their side for the four days,” said Nico Wyss, Solutions Advisor at SAP. “Not only do our customers bring their developers to the hackathons, but they can also learn these new generative AI technologies from the best SAP experts available.”
{{callout-1}}
The most successful hackathons don’t end once the event is over—especially when executives are bought in. Motorola Solutions and Toyota use hackathons as a way to connect executives with new projects and green-light their development.
“We have a ‘Hack-on’ space in Devpost where teams can continue their projects with oversight from our senior leadership and get further resources,” said Janet Carmody, Motorola Solutions. “Some things go right into the patent process and some things need a little more work, but we’ve been touching on all of them.”
“Post-hackathon, we don’t want development to stop there,” said Trey Spyropoulos, Toyota. “Executives are instrumental in terms of finding pathways to productionalizing these projects, and that’s critical.”
Hackathons break down traditional organizational barriers to innovation. Motorola Solutions demonstrates how this inclusive approach can scale.
"Between the hackers, the participants, the judges, and voting, we had 11,000 people participate in our hackathon,” said Janet Carmody, Head of Culture at Motorola Solutions.
“We made sure that everybody had a chance to be a part of it, regardless of what their job or skillset was,” said Janet Carmody, Motorola Solutions.
Estée Lauder showcases the power of cross-functional collaboration. "Hackathons create these unique situations because everyone has their body of knowledge, but when you start crossing the different organizational lines, you see that there's a lot more commonality and a lot more opportunity when ideas come together," said Christopher Aidan, VP of Innovation and Emerging Technologies at Estée Lauder.
Developing internal AI skills is a top priority for both executives and employees as organizations race to adopt AI technologies. Companies are using hackathons as hands-on learning environments to help address potential AI skills gaps.
“Hackathons are a way of learning new skills—last year’s hackathon was all focused on GenAI,” said Tony Hernandez, JLL Technologies.
"Now we're trying to bring in more of our business partners into this hackathon world and drive more collaboration—and not just across engineering," 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," he added.
This focus on skill-building is a cornerstone of AI transformation, ensuring teams are prepared for future challenges while fostering a culture of continuous learning.
{{callout-2}}
Hackathons are strategic tools for driving sustained growth, scaling AI innovation, and embedding innovation into company culture.
Companies are leveraging hackathons to:
Organizations like Okta, Motorola Solutions, JLL, and others mentioned in this post are leading the way in integrating hackathon outcomes into product solutions and broader operational processes.
This year, the ability to rapidly experiment with and implement AI solutions will define industry leaders. Internal hackathons provide more than just a pipeline for innovation—they create a foundation for continuous learning, cross-functional collaboration, and skill development that's essential for staying competitive in an AI-driven future.
Whether you're just starting your AI journey or looking to scale existing initiatives, now is the time to develop your internal hackathon program and give your teams the tools they need to turn AI potential into business reality. Talk to our team of hackathon planning experts to get started.
