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This is about
Culture
Reading time 4 minutes
Published date 23 Nov 2023
This is about
Culture
Reading time 4 minutes
Published date 23 Nov 2023
The hidden business value of Hack Days
Aline Kesting Creative Director
Free creative time is often considered a gift for employees, and it is. Companies make it happen to ensure their employees' well-being, to thrive and keep up with the industry, but rarely for the actual impact it can have on their Business.
Here’s the deal: It can be a boon for business. Today, after years of “hacking", we can quantify its impact on our company. Our side projects have attracted numerous new business inquiries, resulting in some of our biggest projects.
Take, for example, our collaboration with Google Interland（https://www.14islands.com/work/interland）. This partnership became a reality years ago, thanks to a simple WebGL hack（https://14islands.github.io/aeronaut/）. Clients like Pluto VR（https://www.14islands.com/work/pluto） and Yat found us through this blog post（https://www.14islands.com/journal/progressive-enhancement-with-webgl-and-react） See also Progressive Enhancement with WebGL and React Journal（https://www.14islands.com/journal/progressive-enhancement-with-webgl-and-react） and the Blobmixer（https://blobmixer.14islands.com） experiment. Hack Fridays has evolved into a robust marketing and innovation initiative at 14islands. However, for it to be successful, it requires equal commitment from both company owners and our team.
The power of unrestricted ideas
Many companies organize hackathons or workshops to stimulate fresh ideas or brainstorm about their products. While these are fantastic initiatives, they can sometimes limit participants' creativity by confining them to predefined topics. We realized that trusting passionate individuals with complete creative freedom can lead to wild ideas and a stronger sense of ownership. Ultimately, this approach can pave the way for innovations within product companies that might not have emerged through structured brainstorming sessions or workshops.
Quantum Wallet（https://quantumwallet.tech/） started as an April’s fool joke in March. Our team wanted to create something that didn’t (yet) exist. Out came a quantum computing-inspired hardware wallet for cryptocurrencies — Who could have imagined such a brief?
Seizing Opportunities
Most “Hacks” are brief one-day learning experiments. Every Friday, we gather internally to discuss what’s cool about this new tool and the secret sauce behind that new shader technique.
However, a simple idea occasionally creates excitement among more team members and evolves into a concrete project or product concept. After a few weeks of discussion, we assess its potential and sometimes elevate these ideas into bigger projects.
Recently, one developer wanted to explore AI technology behind chatbots and created a grumpy version that engaged the entire team, sparking reactions and laughter. People jumped in with new ideas and motivation to take grumpy bot to the next level.