Facebook Hackathons and Innovation Capabilities

Story by Steve Wunker
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Organizations frustrated with their innovation capabilities sometimes seek inspiration from the world’s most innovative firms. Too frequently, this can lead to a misguided quest for beanbag furniture. 
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The most visible trappings of innovative firms arise after management has already created an environment that facilitates the rapid creation and testing of ideas — they are a result of innovation, not its cause. The real infrastructure underlying innovation capabilities tends to be less flashy: clear strategies, distinct approaches for disruptive innovations, HR policies that tolerate failure, rigorous systems to capture project learnings, and the like.

But once in a while we find flash that really works, for any kind of firm. Facebook’s Hackathons fit the bill. With the company having grown from tiny start-up to 1,200 employees in 6 years, management has worried about how to retain entrepreneurial flexibility and imagination. One way Facebook has kept its verve is the Hackathon — an all-night quest to dream up an idea and make it real, immediately. This isn’t just for engineers; marketing and even legal regularly attend. Anything is fair game, and resulting ideas have ranged from video messaging to a friend suggester. Facebook users can suggest ideas too. Usually the result of one night’s work isn’t something ready to go live on the site, but it is real enough to trigger detailed discussion and feedback.

The Hackathon can have plenty of flash (click for a short video) but don’t be fooled by the sizzle — the guts of this idea apply anywhere:

• Open the idea funnel wide, and invite your business partners to contribute. There is plenty of opportunity later to winnow concepts to the ones meriting serious investment
• Minimize discussion of vague ideas, and create prototypes that lead to rich dialogue
• Constrain innovation by giving people impossibly tight timeframes; one night can be plenty of time to generate enough for others to get the basic idea
• Create the right kind of discussion — imagine how much innovation takes place discussing a half-baked idea produced at 2 am, vs. what occurs in a 100-slide Powerpoint presentation that a team has had 3 months to prepare. After a Hackathon, management can’t take 100 potshots. It has to focus on the key idea and engage in a real give-and-take discussion, which is how meaningful innovations get generated
• Force people to be creative through having everyone contribute — creativity is one of the brain’s most lazy attributes, and almost any company function can become more innovative
• Establish a forum for reviewing out-of-the-box notions — No one knows what a Hackathon will produce, so any output can receive serious consideration
• Lead by example — Facebook’s most prominent Hackathon participant is its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg

Note the differences from brainstorming. A Hackathon produces actionable, specific ideas. Conceivably these could be big strategic concepts, e.g. mapping a new business model, as well as very tactical features. Note as well that the concept isn’t just for industries like software. Consumer products, medical devices, banks and many others can apply these principles to their businesses. No matter how buttoned-down the industry, keep the process messy — indeed, that’s the point.