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Hackathons

How to create effective problem statements for idea challenges and hackathons

Problem statements are concise descriptions of an issue that help understand the problems better and come up with effective solutions. They are like navigational compasses – the direction north being your desired outcome. Whether you are conducting an idea challenge, an internal hackathon (hackathon for your employees) or a full-fledged innovation campaign, the problem statement is key in determining the success.

Why do you need a problem statement?

You need a problem statement so that users don’t solve wrong problems or those that do not exist and end up with pointless innovations that have nothing to do with your business. Case in point: Juicero, a $400 wifi-enabled, over-engineered, pointless machine for fresh juices. No wonder the project was scrapped. But bear in mind that this company raised $120 million in funding from multiple venture capital firms including Google Ventures. No matter how big you are, it is easy to overlook the two most basic questions,

Are we solving the right problem?
Is the problem worth solving?

What is the role of a problem statement?

The role of a problem statement is to clearly indicate the current state of issue, the desired outcome, and the existing gap. Here is a good example, in his recent blog, Richard Branson talks about the global cooling prize that aims to develop a climate friendly residential cooling solution. He does a brilliant job of explaining the problem, the necessity for a solution, and the gap between the current state and the desired outcome.

As our planet warms, we need it more than ever to keep our people cool. Worldwide, by 2030, extreme heat could lead to a $2 trillion loss in labor productivity.

Despite a 100-year runway, the most advanced residential air conditioners have only achieved 14 percent of their maximum theoretical efficiency. Commercial LED lighting has achieved nearly 70 percent of maximum theoretical efficiency. Solar panels have reached 40 percent. I’m no AC expert, but 14 percent seems pathetic.

How to create an effective problem statement

In order to simplify the process and narrow down the problem statement, we suggest defining an overarching theme, followed by a specific problem statement and a set of rules specific to the idea challenge or hackathon.

Define the theme
Define the problem statement
Define the rules

Define the theme

The theme of innovation could be a specific technology, specific business problem or market trend/opportunity.

Here are a few a questions that can help you decide the theme:

What is the major technology that could impact your business in the next 5 years?
What is your most pressing business issue?
What are the emerging trends you would like to capitalize on?

KONE, one of the largest elevator manufacturers in the world, wanted to capitalize on the growing $125 billion modern elevator market. The company identified smart elevators, safety and security, and energy efficiency as the major drivers, and hence chose them as the themes of its hackathon.

Define the problem statement

The problem statement specifies the particular issue/ problem.The problem statement has to be specific and provide as much context as possible. Here is a brilliant example from the invention platform, Quirky.

Here, the theme of innovation is wireless technology, and the company has clearly outlined the status quo, limitations, and some inspirational ideas to get started with. This context will provide the foundation for the participants to build on.

One of the crucial things that we have witnessed which impacts the success of an internal hackathon is the problem statement/theme and its relevance to business objectives/problems.

It is important to provide as much context and additional information as possible to help participants come up with innovative, relevant, and feasible ideas.

Here is a mock theme and problem statement.

Note: This problem statement has been framed for a fictitious internal hackathon for IKEA, Australia. However, the context provided is based on real press releases that outline the vision, strategy, and business objectives mentioned by IKEA, Australia.

	Example 1	Example 2	Example 3
Innovation theme	Evoke positive emotions in customers and enhance customer satisfaction	Improve delivery service of IKEA	Address the children’s market ( 3 to 12 years)
Context	As mentioned by Jan Gardberg, “IKEA is in the business of Emotions. It’s about feelings and emotions; that is the most important part.” IKEA, Australia, tops customer satisfaction survey.	“We will make IKEA accessible to more people through our parcel service for Central West NSW,” Mr Donath said. The cost for the parcel service, small IKEA items, is $9. The parcel service is for products that fit the criteria of 14kg with a maximum size of 1.2m x 80cm x 60cm.	Rob Young, IKEA Australia Childrens’ Range Expert, said that the collections were designed to drive conversation around the importance of protecting our wildlife, particularly endangered species. IKEA has launched new kid’s collections, DJUNGELSKOG & URSKOG.
Problem Statement	Create in-store touchpoints that would delight the customer and enhance the way the consumer experiences IKEA products.	Create solutions to minimize the item returns and parcel service charges.	Come up with more product ideas made of sustainable and renewable resources to educate and inspire young kids.

Narrowing down the problem

Here is a simple tried and tested method of “NESTED WHYs and HOWs” to identify the underlying problem. Here is an illustration of using a series of WHYs and HOWs to craft the problem statement.GE’s mission was to develop innovative and affordable healthcare solutions and the company decided to crowdsource solutions for the same.

GE: Provide high-quality, affordable technology to the people in rural areas

Why?

GE: There is a lack of quality and speed of healthcare delivery

Why?

GE: Unavailability of qualified and experienced healthcare providers in rural areas and new graduates with very little experience in Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs) in India.

How are you planning to solve this?

GE: By providing contextual training to the doctors at Primary Healthcare Centres

How?

GE: Develop a contextual learning protocol that will allow the care-providers to learn from the patients they treat.

Here you have it.

The Problem Statement: Develop a contextual learning protocol that will allow the care providers to learn from the patients they treat.

Define rules/ eligibility

Rules or the eligibility criteria are the constraints laid out by organizers to keep the scope of innovation focused on business, minimize irrelevant ideas, and maintain the standard of submissions.

Lego Ideas allow users to submit new product ideas. Although anyone can submit ideas, the company has well-defined eligibility and evaluation criteria.

For an idea to be selected, it should garner a total of 10,000 votes; 1,000 votes in the first six months, 5,000 in the next, and reach 10,000 in the next six months.

It also restricted the following to ensure submissions are feasible and meet the expected standard.

Content made using new part molds is not allowed.
IP owned by competing toy companies is restricted.
Ideas based on third-party licenses already being produced by Lego are not allowed.
Content matter that is objectionable such as alcohol, drugs, religious references, etc is not allowed.

Conclusion

Providing a clear, concise, and powerful problem statement would help you garner high quality, diverse, and relevant ideas, and help maximize the odds of success of your campaign. Here is the summary of things to bear in mind while crafting the problem statement.

Current status
Pain point
Desired state
Background of the issue
Contextual details
Opportunity
Accurate supporting data

Hackathons

Are hackathons good, bad, or overrated?

From Pope Francis to the President’s office, hackathons seem to be the flavor of the day. Over 80% of Fortune 100 and 60% of Fortune 500 companies have hosted or sponsored a hackathon. With rising popularity come criticisms and misconceptions. Having closely witnessed 300+ hackathons and multiple formats (public, corporate-sponsored, University, Internal and Non-profit hackathons) over a period of two years, one thing is absolutely clear.

Hackathon is a very powerful tool for innovation, IF DONE RIGHT.

However, there are some misbeliefs and unrealistic expectations.

Corporates exploit developers

The most common criticism is that the corporates outsource their work—the participant being unpaid labor and hackathons being exploitative in nature.

Hackathons are purely driven by passionate developers/ participants. The spirit in which people participate in hackathons is no different from voluntary contributions to open source. It originates from the desire to learn, experiment, solve complex problems, contribute, and build cool stuff.

For such developers, hackathons provide the best platform to showcase their skills, connect with their peers, seek mentorship from the industry experts and get recognized.

Case in point: The recent Tesla hackathon, which aims to solve the two major problematic bottlenecks in the robots. Tesla’s aim here is not to outsource work to unpaid labor. It is to crowdsource innovative solutions for its pressing problems.

What about the developers? Are they being exploited?

If you have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology for one of the world’s leading firms transforming the face of the automobile industry and take a shot at solving its most pressing issue in 48 hours, it’s more upside than downside for you. A participant has a lot to gain for the time and effort he or she invests.

Apart from the monetary rewards which only goes to a small percentage of the participants, the real benefit for these developers is often intangible. As one of the participants of the recent International Women’s Hackathon 2018 puts it:

We tried to develop an app that helps answer Google forms through voice ‘Hear me Out’. Although we were not able to build a webapp which was what we had initially thought, just a prototype of a desktop app but the process of sitting together with coming up with an idea and coding was fun. In between the fun we learnt through errors and via helping each other and taking help of seniors and peers. Coding together with chips, maggi, coffee and friends in my room from evening to night and night to morning before the submission was enlightening and enjoyable.

– Disha Agarwal, Participant, Internation Women’s Hackathon

Stack Overflow surveyed 25,000+ developers worldwide to find out why they participated in hackathons.

Source: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/

Who owns the hackathon IPs?

In over 95% of the hackathons, the IPs belong to the participants. Although a majority of the companies still do not claim IP rights for the products created at a hackathon, there are still a few companies that do.

**But we advise participants to carefully read the T&C before signing up. Companies should ensure they communicate anything that is likely to be different from the usual T&C for such events.

Here is the T&C of a recent hackathon hosted by Intel.

Participants owning the ideas/IPs created at the hackathons and companies opting to buy the best ones is, however, a practice that is mutually beneficial and welcomed.

Here is another variation of the T&C for a hackathon hosted by Procter & Gamble.

Employees are obligated to participate in internal hackathons

Companies try to squeeze out innovation out of employees by conducting hackathons and employees are often obligated to participate.

Companies often struggle to come up with ways to engage with their employees in a more meaningful way. Ask any HR Manager or People Director; it is impossible to come up with an activity that pleases every employee.

A hackathon is one particular engagement that hits the sweet spot and many use internal hackathons as a tool for driving employee engagement and fostering a culture of innovation.

Hackathon-a perfect employee engagement tool

Hackathon is one of the very few activities that combine the four essential components of employee engagement. An employee engagement initiative should allow the employees to tap into their passion, enable them to make meaningful contributions to the company, offer recognition, and be engaging.

There could be instances where employees participate out of peer pressure and obligation. But this is not a hackathon-specific issue. Peer pressure at the workplace is common across companies. It is important that companies ensure hackathon participation is voluntary. Constraints might help innovation but not peer pressure and feeling obliged.

Innovations rarely come out of hackathons

The innovations hardly last beyond the hackathon. GroupMe and Skype are rare occurrences and exemptions.

The aim of the hackathon is not to create a blockbuster product, conjure groundbreaking innovations, or build a multi-million company in 48 hours. If that is the expectation, then it is clearly wrong.

The objective of a hackathon is to provide an avenue for experimenting ideas, exploring opportunities, and attempting to solve problems. If a company can spot interesting concepts, promising ideas, and creative solutions, it will further go through an extensive and rigorous process of evaluation, testing, and development before it can be rolled out.

A hackathon is a tool to seed the culture of innovation and meritocracy. It abides by the principle that good ideas can come from anywhere. It is just the starting process of the long and lengthy process of innovation filled with uncertainty. This infographic will give you an idea about the role of hackathons in the process of innovation.

Role of hackathon in the process of innovation

Not an effective recruiting tool

Unlike hiring challenges, a hackathon is not a recruitment tool and should not be used as one. Yes, sometimes companies do spot extraordinary talent and end up absorbing them. But it is just a byproduct and not a regular occurrence.

Neither feasible nor inventive

Hackathon projects are neither feasible nor inventive.

This is a common problem faced by hackathon hosts. The quality of the output does not always meet the expectation. However, over time, we found out that a few common factors affect the success of the hackathons.

Defining problem/goal
Providing the right contextual knowledge
Marketing to the right audience
Guidance and mentorship
Setting the expectations right

Conclusion

There is no perfect tool for innovation. Every process, activity, and framework has its own merits and demerits. It is important to address the drawbacks. Without participants, a hackathon is futile. Hence, it is important to ensure the participants enjoy and gain value out of hackathons.

Overall, a hackathon is a very powerful tool for innovation, IF DONE RIGHT.

Hackathons

Why and when do you need a hackathon management software

In 2018, HackerEarth conducted over 400 hackathons. This included hackathons for enterprises, governments, non-profits, and educational institutions. Companies spent approximately $1.2 million on hackathons for different objectives. For instance, using HackerEarth’s innovation management software, GE Healthcare crowdsourced ideas and prototypes through hackathons, Amazon conducted Alexa hackathon to increase product adoption, HCL for marketing and branding, Societe Generale for hiring data scientists, and plenty of other companies for driving internal innovation.

Download the complete Hi-res Infographic

These organizations chose HackerEarth for three reasons:

Availability of robust hackathon management software
Presence of a vibrant 2.5million+ global developer community
Expertise in hackathon-driven innovation

In this post, we will discuss the necessity of a hackathon management software. To be specific,

Do you need software to manage hackathons?
If so, when and why do you need a hackathon software?
What are the features to look for in a hackathon management software?

If you are here, it is safe to assume that you are planning to organize a hackathon. So here are a few questions that will help you decide if you need a hackathon software.

How big is the hackathon?

If you are planning to engage hundreds or thousands of people, then you should be prepared to handle a high volume of ideas and projects. The process of registration and judging also become increasingly difficult with more participants. If it is an internal company-wide hackathon, with employees participating from multiple locations, you need a robust platform to manage all communications and submissions. As a rule of thumb, if you have more than 50 people participating in your hackathon, you will need a software.

Is it an online or multi-phased hackathon?

Online hackathons give you a wider reach. But you will need a platform that supports ideas and prototype submissions. Specifically, you will need a file upload portal that supports a variety of formats that automatically opens and closes during the specified duration.

You can read more about the various types of hackathons here.online, offline, and two-phase hackathons

Is there an ideation phase?

If you are planning to include an ideation phase or run only an ideathon, then the role of a hackathon software becomes imminent. When it comes to ideation, the real challenge lies in combing through thousands of ideas, ensuring every single idea is evaluated efficiently and making sure the best ideas rise to the top.

A hackathon management software makes this task very simple. It helps assign multiple judges, set the evaluation parameters, and in the end, every idea is accounted for, with an option for feedback, if at all you want to validate the ideas manually. If you prefer automatic evaluation, you will need a sophisticated algorithm based on a solid crowdsourcing framework that gives visibility to the top ideas. Here is a glimpse of what a hackathon management software can do.

Assign multiple judges
Assign scores and ratings to ideas
Create a real-time leaderboard
Enable peer voting
Enable public voting
Provide real-time suggestions and feedback to improve ideas

One of the biggest challenges you may face is clubbing similar ideas. For example, during a sustainable development hackathon for a global energy company, we received more than 3,500+ ideas. A lot ideas were based on similar concepts and solving similar problems. For instance, there were more than 25 ideas that were based on decentralized energy production and consumption.

Thankfully, our software was able to club these ideas using Natural Language Processing (NLP). This feature of the hackathon software allows you to automatically read through the submissions and club together similar ideas under one common hashtag.

Are you running a Machine learning (ML) hackathon?

If you are running a Machine learning or a data science hackathon/challenge, the hackathon management software is a must-have. The highlight of the software is the auto evaluate feature. Here is how the process works.

Users build the model and submit their predictions on the test data sets.
User predictions are compared with original test cases, and based on the evaluation metrics, the score is generated.
Users can make multiple submissions, enabling them to continuously improve the model.

If you were to do it manually, it would take at least 15 minutes to evaluate a single submission. To give you an idea of the time saved, in our latest Machine learning hackathon conducted for Societe Generale, we had 5,500+ participants and over 2,500 submissions. If done manually, Societe Generale would need 625 hours/26 days just to evaluate the submissions.

Must-have features in a hackathon management software

When opting for a hackathon management software, ensure it has the following features:

Single sign-on & user restriction

If you are conducting an internal hackathon, then single sign-on (SSO) is the basic feature that the hackathon management software must have. It enables domain-based restriction for the participant.

If a company called ABC is hosting a hackathon, then only employees of the company with ABC.com domain can participate.

The user can also be restricted on the basis of “invite-only.” This avoids people registering for the hackathon by forwarding the registration link. This also allows to conduct business unit or geography specific campaigns.

Third Party Integration

Most organizations use Slack, Yammer, Teams, Flock or some form of collaboration/communication tool. Integrating the hackathon software makes it easier for the employees to participate, submit ideas, and engage.

Data Security

Data security is one of the primary concerns of many top companies. The best option for companies concerned with data security is to handle everything on their own servers. Your hackathon management software should provide the option of hosting hackathons on the company’s server as well as a private cloud.

Good-to-have features in a hackathon management software

Here are some good-to-have features in a hackathon management software that would make your life easier.

Customizing the hackathon flow: Having the flexibility to customize the flow, i.e., the number of phases, allows you to customize campaigns specific to your requirements.

Example: Ideation followed by judging followed by onsite hackathon.

Multiple campaigns: Running multiple campaigns across different BUs or locations helps in scaling the event.

Cloning a campaign: Replicating successful campaigns becomes easier and saves a lot of time.
Archiving a campaign: Allows you to re-visit campaigns and create a pipeline of ideas.

Conclusion

If a hackathon is your preferred tool for sustained and continuous innovation, then hackathon management software will definitely help in scaling the efforts and streamlining the process, while maintaining the consistency and making your tasks 100 folds easier. In conclusion, you will need a hackathon management software if the following list of 6 areas is of your concern.

Scale
Effective Idea management
Cross-functional collaboration
Data Security
Consistency
Ease of use

Hackathons

The role of hackathons in the process of innovation

Hackathons have become increasingly popular over the years. On a superficial level, a hackathon is still seen as a one-off annual event or a PR stunt. According to the 2017 Global hackathon report, more than 50% of hackathons conducted worldwide are recurring events.

Companies such as Facebook and Cognizant use hackathons as tools for sustained innovation. Even smaller companies with a shoestring budget for innovation find hackathons as a safe and promising bet.

Process of Innovation

Broadly speaking, innovation is the process of commercializing new and innovative ideas. Let’s take a typical innovation process, for example.

Process of innovation

The first step of the process is discovery. Discovery is the act of choosing your area of focus for innovation. It can be emerging trends, a big market insight that has the potential to disrupt the market or even a game-changing technology.

Once the area of focus is finalized, then you need to choose how can you exploit the opportunity. In other words, you figure out what can be done in this space that would offer the opportunity growth. And you need to consider all possible ideas. And this where the second stage of the innovation process, ideation, comes in. Rather than depending on a few ideas, you open it up to a larger group internally or externally.

The next step of the innovation process would be execution, where the ideas are evaluated and the best ones are shortlisted. This is followed by the development of a prototype, followed by a feasibility study and if all goes well, you roll it out to the market.

Role of hackathons in the innovation process

The challenge lies in executing every step of the innovation process efficiently and connecting them in a coherent manner.

With hackathons, you can take the market insights you have identified, translate it into themes and problem statements and open it up for ideation followed by the development of prototypes.

For instance, KONE, one of the world’s largest elevator manufacturers, wanted to capitalize on the expected $37 billion market growth. It conducted a hackathon with the identified market drivers as themes such as smart elevators, security, and energy efficiency. It opened the challenge to the developer community around the globe and ended up with working prototypes in a span of few weeks.

The infographic below clearly shows how valuable a hackathon can be in the process of innovation.

The role of a hackathon in the process of innovation

The role of a hackathon in the process of innovation

What makes a hackathon a valuable innovation tool

What makes a hackathon unique is that it is the only tool that enables the creation of minimum viable products or prototypes from ideas. There is no other innovation activity that covers roughly 70% of the process.

Hackathons are swift. The entire process of creating a hackathon, marketing the event, driving registrations, ideating, and creating prototypes typically takes 30 to 40 days. At the end of the event, you are left with working prototypes. An innovation program cannot get more agile than this.

The diversity of ideas is another important factor. When you open up a problem to a global audience, you are bound to receive a diverse set of ideas which wouldn’t be possible with traditional innovation models.

Overall, a hackathon is a consummate tool for sustained innovation. Regular events yield better results than one-off hackathons. If treated as an innovation program and crafted meticulously and executed efficiently, it is the most cost effective innovation tool.

[Ebook] How to conduct your first hackathon. Download now.

Hackathons

Tips for a great hackathon

A Bit of History

Rewind to 1975 when the Homebrew Computer Club—“a grassroots group of hardware hackers in Silicon Valley who kickstarted the personal computer revolution”—met in a Menlo Park garage. This gathering may be considered the first building block of today’s hackathon. The term “hackathon” was first used in 1999 at the OpenBSD event in Calgary and later at the Sun Microsystems JavaOne conference.

A hackathon is typically an event lasting several days where people collaborate on software or hardware projects. Over time, the scope has expanded to include social causes, healthcare, music, art, and more. Hackathons foster creativity, skill-sharing, and community-building while also offering branding, recruitment, and innovation opportunities.

How to organize successful hackathons Ebook

Get Hackathon Ready

Organizing a hackathon requires meticulous planning. Without the right preparation, even a great idea can turn chaotic. When done well, hackathons are productive and energizing; when done poorly, they waste resources and participant enthusiasm.

For Physical (Offline) Hackathons

6 Months Before: Define your theme, target audience, and goal. Choose a problem statement aligned with your objective—branding, innovation, hiring, etc.
4 Months Before: Choose event format (offline/online/hybrid), finalize duration, venue, website, budget, rules, and swag. Identify sponsors and partners.
2–3 Months Before: Share the code of conduct. Recruit jury, speakers, mentors, and coaches. Prepare working environments and promotion strategy.
1 Month to 1 Week Before: Confirm final entries, finalize logistics, speaker/judge list, catering, transportation, and reminders to attendees. Keep social media up-to-date.
Day Zero: Execute registrations, tech checks, team formation, workshops, and demos. Ensure venue readiness and a smooth, engaging experience.
Post Event: Announce winners, measure ROI, gather feedback, and follow up via blogs and videos. Encourage continuity for impactful projects.

Quick Dos and Don’ts

Factors	Do	Don’t
Theme	Explore broad existing verticals	Don’t glorify your product under a social theme
Target Audience	Communicate required skills	Ignore diversity or participant range
Format	Select in-person events for high engagement	Avoid offline events if there are logistical limits
Venue	Choose location based on size and accessibility	Forget to book in advance or clarify fees
Sponsors	Use tiered pricing, create mutual value	Neglect early outreach to key players
Code of Conduct	Create a safe, inclusive environment	Be dismissive of complaints or misconduct
Speakers & Mentors	Invite experts and influencers	Assume hackers don’t need guidance
Promotion	Use social media, email, PR, community outreach	Assume brand alone will drive participation
D-Day	Rehearse, double-check logistics	Leave food, Wi-Fi, or attendance to chance
Prizes & Follow-up	Reward all, follow up post-event	Only reward winners or skip post-event engagement

For Online Hackathons

If your goals are reach, diversity, and cost-efficiency, an online hackathon is ideal. Key steps include:

Define theme, audience, schedule, and format
Set rules, find judges, sponsors, and set up your event site
Pick the right hackathon management platform
Engage participants via tools, forums, and support
Follow up with announcements, insights, and outcomes

Use a hackathon management tool for team formation, resource sharing, and submissions. A seamless user experience drives quality participation.

For Internal Hackathons

Promote collaboration, creativity, and realistic deliverables
Management should define clear problem scope and encourage risk-free ideation
Evaluate success by engagement, actionable outcomes, and long-term value

Conclusion

Hackathons have led to groundbreaking innovations at companies like Google and Facebook. Yet many talented individuals avoid them due to poor past experiences. With thoughtful planning and participant-centric focus, that can be changed.

Hackathons are great for creativity, networking, and solving real problems. Whether you're hosting one in an office or a high school garage, download the e-book “The Complete Guide to Organizing a Successful Hackathon” for full insights.

Hackathon Whitepaper

Tech Assessment

How to drive API adoption through hackathons

Studies show that hackathons seem to be the most effective method to acquire and engage developer talent for open APIs.

Introduction

The star working behind the scenes, connecting devices, databases, and applications, application programming interfaces (APIs) are super-efficient “messengers” vital to organizations across sectors; for reuse in useful, interesting apps (tools and widgets), APIs allow these organizations to open their databases, backend systems, and information assets.

A simple definition of an API could be this: “An API is the messenger that delivers your request to the provider that you’re requesting it from and then delivers the response back to you.” For example, say you order an anorak from an e-retailer such as Amazon. The website will send your credit card details to PayPal, a payment processor, your shipping information to FedEx, a delivery partner, and then, validate your address using another API. Did you notice that all you needed to know was what to click and how to send a “request” and wait for the “response,” which could be payment status, shipping charges, etc.? (If you think about it, the function of an API closely mirrors that of a waiter at a restaurant.)

Programmers communicate with an application, such as Accuweather or Candy Crush, use this common interface, which acts like a go-between. “API is a precise specification written by providers of a service that programmers must follow when using that service. It describes what functionality is available, how it must be used and what formats it will accept as input or return as output. In recent years, the term API colloquially is used to describe both the specification and service itself, e.g., the Facebook Graph API,” says API Chapter Manager at Sprout Social, Kevin Stanton.

Uses of APIs

According to John Musser, co-founder of Programmable Web, an API can be used to create value in several ways, including the following:

APIs as product
Marketing/Distribution channel
User/Content acquisition
Drive innovation/traffic
Accelerate internal projects
Partner/Upsell opportunities
Lead generation/ Business development/Increase footprint
Extend product/Device and Mobile support
Increase stickiness
New line of business

Three P’s of an API program

Developing an API program comprises three stages¹ — Plan, Productize, and Promote.

From the snapshot below, you can see that attracting and engaging developers are core activities for a successful API strategy. With a well-designed API program with skilled developers and open APIs, companies can extend their reach significantly by enabling market adoption, accelerating innovation by crowdsourcing, and maintaining a constant revenue cycle.

For an organization, its value chain will have its assets, the APIs that open up these assets, developers who use these assets through APIs to create value, apps the developers build and end users.

The 3 Ps of API - how to drive API adoption using hackathons

Source: Software AG

Promoting your API

Once a product is good to go, it is ready to enter the marketing cycle. This is true for APIs as well.

Just like you would design any marketing strategy, segment your audience, target accessible, differentiable, and substantial developer segments to enter, and position the API to effectively address specific challenges of the target segments.
Indulge in influencer marketing; create advocates and get buy-in from great developers. Instead of talking at the developer community, listen to their feedback and advice.
Give the influencers leeway; let them work for you.

You need a great demo that talks about your company and the product, how it generates business value, and a live demo showing some code or what you can build on top of the API.

With a scalable, practical, and reliable API, developers can innovate, happily too if rewards and recognition are assured. Remember that developers target different environments, platforms, operating systems, languages, services, etc. Companies work with developer evangelists, support developer events, and launch an outstanding developer portal to better position the interface.

Call it marketing or call it raising awareness. Either way, your developers need to know this API exists. Public Relations managers can ensure that the information that is disseminated about your API is accurate while highlighting its unique features. You can reach developers through social channels, at events, and through other developer communities.

Remember to define your metrics. (Go here for a good post on API metrics.)

API funnel 0- how to drive API adoption using hackathons

*The first two steps—acquisition and activation, come under the marketing umbrella.

**The other three—retention, revenue, and referral depend on many factors such as the quality of your API.

Provide forums and interactive, up-to-date documentation to engage and educate the developers

In his talk on API adoption, marketing expert Adam DuVander presented results from a survey on API adoption, where developers rated these factors as most important on a scale of 1–4. Complete and accurate documentation tops the list with a rating of 3.5. DuVander says, “You can also help your marketing department to speak ‘developer,’ and part of that is making sure your documentation is great and accessible.” To plug into the API, “Not only show them what’s possible, but show them how to do it using your API.” (With sample apps or tutorials). Forums allow developers to have stimulating and informative discussions on code examples, best practices, etc.

Create an all-encompassing API portal

This portal will be the go-to place for developers to “register, explore, and learn” about your API, including seamless payment link integrations. A registration process that’s easy to use should give them an API key for example. An API console or ready code will help developers test the functionality without having to write any code; make sure it is impressive. Offer the right devkits or SDKs, with installation and packaging standards. Ensure you offer adequate support services; a little hand holding is always appreciated. Present developers with great uses cases with sample code and your SDKs. Your links to external resources must include announcements/updates and any information that will be useful (e.g. standards). Tools such as APIfy will help to build and manage such a central repository.

Driving API adoption through hackathons

A well-marketed and well-executed hackathon can get you 1500 developers and 3000+ for big names such as IBM. And you can get anywhere between 20–40 decent applications. All this can be done over a course of 4 weeks. “From a marketing standpoint, the developer acquisition is cost is very low.” Hackathons are an excellent example of viral marketing.

Specifically, a hackathon:

Gives you maximum air time to pitch your API to the developers
Gives you the opportunity to put your product (API) in the hands of passionate developers and get them to use it
Gets you valuable feedback from the developers to improve your product

*Hackathons are different from developer conferences and meetups. “A simple analogy would be that a hackathon is an internship, while a developer conference is a classroom.”

Points to remember for API providers hosting hackathons for marketing

Online hackathons are better suited
Note that online hackathons could be a better bet as you get rid of all constraints related to venue selection and logistics. They also allow you to reach out to developers around the world. Keep the submission phase of the hackathon open for a longer duration, ideally for about two months.
Support at the hackathon
Provide support and know-how via webinars, walkthrough, videos, tutorials, and examples of similar applications built using the API.
Post-hackathon engagement
Support developers who could support only half-built applications as well; invite the developers for a symposium, follow up with them via emails and social channels for their feedback, and engage with them regularly. These people will form your talent pipeline.

**For all the finer details about how to organize a hackathon, download this ebook.

Conclusion

According to Philipp Schöne, Product Manager at Axway, “hackathons are a great way to learn what external people think about your offering… start with smaller groups and go bigger if you get more confident with your offering.”

You don’t always need to host a hackathon. You could participate or be a partner for smaller events. “Too often people think building a community means running a hack event, we found that running our own hack events didn’t fit our API, however attending and participating (as a team vs API vendor) in hack events was invaluable for building out a community. The best thing you can do is roll up your sleeves and get involved,” says Keran McKenzie, a platform evangelist at MYOB.

If companies find it hard reaching out to the developer community, then they can partner with vendors such as HackerEarth to leverage its 1.5 million+ developer community and use its hackathon management software.