Embrace a Little Chaos When Innovating Under Pressure

In general, upfront coordination and other standard best practices are reliable tools for teams attempting to develop new products. But under extreme time pressure, these traditional approaches fall short. The authors analyzed 13 hackathon teams tasked with developing health tech devices to determine common pitfalls and effective strategies for rapidly accelerating the innovation process. They found that the most successful teams abandoned standard collaboration techniques and minimized upfront coordination. While the lack of coordination sometimes impeded these teams in the short run, it also helped them to stay flexible and experiment quickly with different ideas, ultimately enabling them to successfully develop effective new products in just 72 hours.