Digital innovation and entrepreneurship transformation through open data hackathons: Design strategies for successful start-up settings

The organization of open data hackathons or digital innovation competitions is a significant opportunity for nascent entrepreneurs to collaborate with external partners, promote new ideas and extend their applications to a new start-up. Prior studies have not thoroughly compared the execution of different strategies in many hackathons or digital innovation competitions. They only focus on the actions that the organizers of a specific hackathon have implemented or the challenges they have faced. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine goals and design strategies that contribute to the successful execution of open data hackathons and innovation competitions. Six case studies of open data hackathons and innovation competitions held between 2014 and 2018 in Thessaloniki have been explored to understand the co-ordination between the multiple stakeholders of these events and improve the execution of open data hackathons and innovation competitions. The outcomes indicate that the most critical design strategy was the involvement of mentors in the event and the level of support provided to nascent entrepreneurs to accelerate their creativity, develop applications and launch their prototypes on the market.