The Facebook ‘like’ button

Islam Zween, Argaam CEO

The Facebook’s ‘like’ button was invented in 2009 by an internal knowledge-sharing and brainstorming gathering that brought together product managers, programmers, engineering managers and internal communications managers. They ended up with today’s universal way to express approval and an emotion on the social media network.

In 2020, the European Commission’s Innovation Council held a three-day online event with the aim of finding creative ideas in post-Covid era in these domains: Health and Life, Business Continuity, Social and Political Cohesion, Remote Working and Education, and Digital Finance. More than 100 brilliant ideas were presented.

The two separate examples are widely known as ‘hackathons’, which combine the two words in English ‘hack’, which in this context associates with positive technological disruption, and ‘marathon’. They serve as virtual knowledge brokers to assist knowledge flows that support stakeholders to co-ideate and co-design business ideas while competing for monetary prizes.

The results are always impressive as they help achieve growth and long-term oriented success in rapidly changing markets. Some of the world’s most successful start-ups have started from a hackathon, which only lasts for a couple of days whether in person or online. It’s a quick way that spares years in costly R&D. Let’s take the American Startup Weekend’s hackathon as an example. The 54-hour event started in 2007 and is still running to date. One of the winning ideas in the 2012 version is today’s Carousell, an app to simplify the process of selling unwanted household clutter. The designers closed their series C funding at around $70-$80 million.

Hacathons aren’t only beneficial to corporations or recruiters who attend to identify talent, but also to the macroeconomics of countries. Take Italy’s travel and tourism sector as an example. The sector contributed roughly 11% to Italy's gross domestic product (GDP), or about 215 billion euros. This was almost the same as in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic. A hackathon was held in 2020 under the title of ‘Hack for Travel’. In no time, it combined diverse backgrounds online and harnessed the power of Open Data to provide practical solutions and design strategies to relaunch tourism in the pandemic era that has greatly changed tourist behaviours worldwide.

And it isn’t always for economic interest. One aspect of particular interests regards what drives an entrepreneur in investing time and money in an activity like the “Hack For Travel” hackathon was ethical motivations to help find creative ideas in different domains that can benefit other countries, corporations and individuals worldwide, as everyone was facing the uncertainty and anxiety triggered by the pandemic. The organisers wanted also do something positive in a time of a deep crisis. Positive spirit and mind.

Isn’t it beautiful to involve too many actors including governments and sponsors from the private sector for a noble cause without anyone of them being paid, so that the young talented programmers and the tech-savvy with the support of volunteering mentors come up with solutions to the economic and social problems created by the lockdowns?

But do hackathon projects get continued after the event has ended? Academic literature shows that only one third of all hackathon events continue after the end. Enthusiasm rapidly deteriorates after the first few days and only about 5% of all projects – apart from the winning ideas -- are continued for more than 5 months.

Several studies have found out that is a hackathon project is very likely to continue after the even if it’s a direct extension of an existing product of a corporation, which later invests in the complete prototype thanks to the skill diversity that was at display in the event.

Even if your ideas didn’t make it to the winning list. Long-term planning and continuation are vital for perhaps a new start-up that can attract investors and acusitions. And always remember the Facebook example, which demonstrates that creative and valuable ideas always come from within your own company.

Islam Zween, Argaam CEO