A Practical Guide to Ideathons

Successful companies globally attest to the fact that innovation is the cornerstone of organizational growth. Modern-day businesses are facing challenges with fast-evolving consumer preferences and technological advances, which require mandating continual amelioration of processes and products to retain their competitive advantage.

It is equally true that innovation cannot be undertaken daily or alongside routine undertakings, as it requires unwavering focus and attention to detail. Therefore, numerous organizations are setting aside time to utilize innovation platforms such as ideathons to foster a culture of intra-organizational collaboration and ideation. Some others are also employing these ideation platforms for brand building and recruitment.

Ideathons are intensive brainstorming events where individuals from different backgrounds, skills, and interests identify the best opportunities and ideate the most viable solution. An ideathon may require just ideas, a solution, a roadmap, or an actionable plan. Ideathons are typically time-bound, spanning a few hours to a couple of days.

Many corporates use ideathons as an innovation platform for internal and external competitions. Internal ideathons focus on employee engagement, team building and solving long-standing business problems. External ideathons are mostly employed during campus recruitment to establish brand connections with fresh graduates. Participants usually work in teams, offer multiple ideas and solutions, and subsequently work toward the most suitable solution. An ideathon provides opportunities to learn, collaborate, innovate and change.

The Importance of an Ideathon

New ideas are the bedrock of innovation. Organizations are always in need of new perspectives and ideas to evolve. A great way for any organization to achieve a breakthrough is by crowdsourcing ideas and getting new perspectives through different ideation tools and platforms.

Ideathons emphasize the importance of teamwork and a group’s collective ability to always offer better results and solutions. Thus, they are a great way to innovate a business problem, product, or service by inspiring the participants with the right theme and problem statement.

Automation and digital transformation are affecting businesses in all domains. Ideathons, and even hackathons, to an extent, are not just for a limited group today. Every business relies on innovation and technology, directly or indirectly. In the current customer-driven market, an increasing number of companies want to use innovation to understand the customer psyche better, track usability, personalize their experiences, and build more customer-friendly and dynamic products. Ideathons provide businesses with an innovation platform by bringing together the best minds.

Ideathons and hackathons are increasingly becoming a norm in the industry as they provide a playground for problem solvers to explore endless possibilities and deep dive for a fixed but continuous period. Usually, a minimum viable product (MVP), or even a solution roadmap, takes months of planning and execution. However, what makes ideathons unique is their ability to enable brainstorming a solution in a much shorter timeframe.

A reliable solution for continuous innovation, ideathons prove to be quite advantageous and effective in a world where innovation and creative thinking are linked to the growth and success of businesses.

While hackathons have been popular within tech communities, ideathons look beyond professions and educational qualifications and focus on innovation, creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. Ideathons are great ideation tools for finding solutions to long-standing business problems. It could be designing a logo, revamping a website, coming up with a brand tagline, creating a prototype, etc.

Depending on the ideathon themes and the use case and objectives, the right innovation platform should cater to formats for crowdsourcing ideas, team collaboration, and engagement and idea-sharing.

A task-specific ideathon, as the name suggests, revolves around a specific task. A perfect ideathon example of this is the famous Lays campaign, where consumers were invited to participate and come up with a new flavor of chips. An open-ended ideathon is where all new ideas are welcome. For example, an organization opens a forum for ideas on improving customer service.

Ideathons are a reservoir of innovation, and only a good problem statement can produce the desired result. Businesses must identify the target audience, the type of ideathon they want to conduct, and its mode of engagement.

With innovation as the larger objective, involve the organization’s leadership in the process to lend a visionary perspective to the discussion, and think ahead in terms of the business roadmap.

Choosing a problem statement related to a wider audience will ensure enthusiastic solutions, a better participation rate and deeper engagement. The problem statement is important for both the organizers and the participants. A relevant problem statement embodies the wider objective of the ideathon, inspiring participants to create an innovative solution that solves a real need.

The problem statement needs to cover the current state of the situation, the final impact and where the gaps lie. For this, define the ideathon theme. It could be a social problem, a business obstacle, a trending industry topic, etc. Use available market insights when deciding the theme and the problem statement.

Every ideathon is distinctive, and the organization should lend its uniqueness to the nature of the problem statement, fueling innovation.

To ensure an unbiased ideathon, it’s imperative to set clear and comprehensive rules and regulations. These guidelines help ensure examination integrity throughout the competition, allowing each participant an equal opportunity to showcase their ideas.

1. Defining eligibility criteria

The first step in organizing an ideathon is to clearly outline eligibility criteria, submission guidelines, and any specific requirements participants need to meet. Setting these parameters upfront ensures that everyone knows the expectations from the outset.

2. Setting an integral evaluation process

To prevent personal biases from influencing the judging process, it’s important to establish an integral evaluation process. Judges should assess submissions based on objective criteria rather than subjective opinions. This could include factors such as creativity, feasibility, impact potential, or alignment with the given problem statement.

3. Protecting intellectual property rights

Ideathons often involve sharing innovative ideas that can be valuable intellectual property. To safeguard participants’ rights, it’s essential to implement measures such as privacy notices and license agreements. These documents outline how submitted ideas will be used while ensuring that participants retain ownership of their intellectual property.

4. Ensuring confidentiality measures

Maintaining confidentiality is crucial during an ideathon to prevent idea theft or unauthorized use of participants’ concepts. Organizers should communicate how they will handle confidential information and ensure that judges and organizers sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) for added protection.

5. Resolving conflicts quickly

It’s important for organizers to establish conflict resolution mechanisms to address these issues promptly. This could involve having a designated point person or committee responsible for resolving conflicts impartially.

Xathon, Mercer | Mettl’s innovation software, is an end-to-end ideation platform that facilitates collaboration and innovation. Businesses get access to Mercer | Mettl’s subject matter experts, who help devise the perfect problem statement, allowing organizations to look beyond the periphery of their innovation process.

Mercer | Mettl’s ideation tools are fully customizable for ease-of-use of both participants and organizers. It lets businesses set up and launch their own ideathon with just a few clicks. Mercer | Mettl’s ideathon platform further supports use cases, such as crowd-sourced idea generation, collaboration, idea sharing, engagement and shortlisting via voting, rating and commenting on ideas.