Did you know that since 2000, 52% of Fortune 500 companies have gone down the road to failure? Technology disruptions are the main reason these companies either went bankrupt, acquired, or ceased to exist. According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of S&P companies will be replaced by 2027.
The Accenture 2015 US Innovation Survey reported that 84% of executives considered their future success to be highly dependable on innovation. By now, you should not find it hard to believe that innovation is a priority. Since innovation is all about getting out of the box, why bet on the limited number of ideas that can be produced by one team, even if it’s the best team in the world when you can get access to the best ideas in the world, despite being by talents many miles away from where you are?
When you bring new ideas and solutions into your organization by allowing outside networks and communities to collaborate with your internal teams, you witness the power of open innovation. In 2017, the BCG 2017 survey found that the best innovators supported open collaboration 77% of the time.
But how can you create this bridge between your teams and the rest of the world? How can you communicate your challenges effectively and find someone who can offer the most optimal solution? What kind of platform allows others to pitch their innovative ideas and filters the high-quality ones for you to judge? In fact, how can you judge and select the most suitable solutions for your company? This is where Untap comes in handy!
It is because of our belief in the power of innovation that Untap came to existence in the first place. Our passion for helping organizations understand how they can make the best out of it is why we are sharing with you in this article the 7 ways you can accelerate your corporate’s growth, elevate your brand and achieve your goals through innovation programs using Untap.
1. Find Innovative Solutions
Building an open innovation challenge or an ideathon on Untap platform enables you to find innovative solutions to your challenge(s). The experienced team at Untap can help you formulate the problem statement, customize a landing page for the program, reach relevant participants, and manage the initial screening phase.
You can state more than one challenge in a program and participants will submit to the tracks they are interested in, and there can be several phases in each challenge/competition. Communication with participants and judges is smooth and the mentorship and judging experiences are easy. We proudly supported our customers and helped them reach solutions for their challenges, customers like P&G, DELL, Deutsche Welle, and iHub. You can learn more from the case study of P&G’s UNBOX Innovation Challenge.
2. Develop and/or Improve Your Products
In an online hackathon, you can bring coders and innovators together, form teams, and let their collaboration produce tech solutions for problems and/or ideas for your digital product development. Hackathons promote multidisciplinary collaboration and last for a short period of time (1-3 days). They can be held internally among employees of the company or publicly, allowing the contribution of external talents.
Running your hackathon on Untap means all your hackathon phases are in one place (from registration to prototypes to final pitches), competent teams are formed with effective matchmaking and judges evaluate seamlessly in an organized process. The team at Untap helps you communicate clear hackathon objectives and attract relevant experts.
Among our online hackathon customers are Vodafone, DELL, and Dubai Future Foundation.
3. Stay Updated with New Tech Solutions and Trends
You don’t have to wait for a challenge to seek innovative solutions, the tech world is rapidly changing and you want to be ahead of the game regarding your performance, your customer’s experience, and the trends in your industry. Startup Programs can be an effective way to get you involved in the tech scene.
In a startup program, you can call for competition between new emerging startups that offer innovative tech products/services. There is more than one option for how you can collaborate with the winning startup; you can become among the pioneers of applying their new solution in your industry, you can have your corporate invest in the startup, or you can simply run the competition as an awards program to support the most innovative startup, this strengthens your positioning in the market and boosts your brand (more about that later).
DW’s Start-ups On Air and Proptech Start-up and Scale-up Europe Award were examples of programs that aimed at finding innovative ideas. Not only can Untap support your program technically from A to Z on the platform but it can even provide you with consultation regarding the program goals, theme, description, mentorship workshops, initial filtration of participants, judges selection, and judging criteria.
4. Recruit Qualified Talents
With all the hiring challenges we face such as lack of experience, high salary demands, and technical and software skills, more innovative and up-to-date methods are required to attract and recruit the right talents.
We previously thoroughly discussed in another article the reasons why resorting to coding challenges and online hackathons are the best way to recruit software developers and to summarize here, let us just state them in points:
- Prioritizing innovation attracts the right talents who also value and prioritize innovation.
- In a given challenge and a limited time, you get to assess the candidate’s problem-solving skills in action.
- You get to experiment with their collaboration and teamwork skills.
- See if they can really work under pressure.
- Effectively cut down recruitment time by 80%.
- Evaluate candidates accurately based on predefined criteria scores at every phase in the process not just by the final output.
Dell has been using Untap platform for its ongoing recruitment programs such as Hacktrick, C4F2 Hackathon, and Summer Academy since 2019.
5. Motivate Your Employees
Yes, we believe in the power of open innovation and collaborating with external talents to find solutions and out-of-the-box ideas but, still, internal innovation programs have a whole other set of benefits for a company.
First of all, in the software world, hackathons have proven successful when it comes to generating and developing ideas in a short time. Dedicating a special time for developers makes them feel empowered and may lead to new product development. And in any industry, running an innovation program where employees are asked to form teams, brainstorm, and pitch ideas are basically setting up a context for creativity. When you bring a group of people together who have the same interests and skills, it becomes interesting and competitive, the time constraint spices the challenge even more and the rewards make the whole experience exciting for the employees.
Hackathons and competitions improve performance, productivity, communication, and collaboration among employees and are highly recommended to be held as a frequent internal event. Some companies even take it to another level by encouraging their employees to compete against external teams. “ABTKR” was one of our success stories, we powered this internal program with the purpose of enriching and enhancing the culture of innovation and digital entrepreneurship among employees of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
You can seamlessly build your hackathon on Untap platform and the team at Untap can provide you with consultation regarding the program that best suits your company and supports you throughout the entire process if needed.
6. Create Social Impact
There is so much potential when talents are brought together in a collaborative environment. And if there is one lesson the world must never forget from the pandemic, it should be that collaborative innovation is not a luxury, it actually saves lives! From global warming to cultural challenges, the world still has a lot of battles to fight.
As part of your CSR plans, you can build an innovation program with an actual social impact. You can empower minorities, spread awareness, develop solutions, mitigate risks, boost scientific research and innovation, and many more ways to solve challenges on a global or a community level.
Many of our customers resorted to innovation for their CSR projects, they used Untap and our team proudly helped them achieve their goals. These customers include Oxfam’s Superstar Impact competition and Vodafone Egypt’s women empowerment “FEKRETEK” program.
7. Boost Your Brand
Your goal can be solving a challenge, finding an innovative idea, staying up to date with tech trends, discovering talents, CSR, or motivating your employees, but branding and marketing will automatically be achieved whether you had the intention or not.
Whether it’s a startup program, an innovation challenge, an online hackathon, a virtual hiring event, or an awards program, having your brand name associated with innovation-driven events naturally links your corporate reputation with innovation.
According to your objectives, you can either run a program white labeled to your brand name, partner with another party, or get involved as a sponsor of an innovation program built by Untap or other organizations. In all cases, you can benefit by marketing your brand as a pioneer in innovation and boosting your PR among the innovation community. So far, Dell was able to reach more than 25,000 innovation enthusiasts who participated in its Untap-powered programs.
The team at Untap understands your needs and accordingly consults you with the right program and supports you throughout the entire process, book your free consultation session now.
