Study on hackathons for new innovation seed and business model development needs in digitalization driven sustainability, circularity and environmentally friendly solutions demanding digitalizing societies

In developed countries, companies face constant growing legal enforcement and pressure from governments and local municipalities to become more environmentally friendly. Nowadays, sustainability is a business advantage and a clear competitive edge as an integral part of some front- line companies’ business models too [1-3]. In this complex environment, several options are available for companies to become more sustainable in terms of their services and products, operative actions and business models. For example, this can be achieved by reducing income inequality [99] and minimizing the negative environmental impact [4]. Companies can hire expensive consultants and study step by step guidebooks for making less waste and running their operations more environmentally friendly, or they can innovate and jump new level of sustainable production. In the innovation strategy, different organizations typically do collaborate with higher education institutions, with the goal to acquire and implement new sustainable solution seeds for the business operations. Such collaborations exist in the form of hackathons, code camps and similar events which have been proven to be powerful and successful sources of innovation seeds. The study objective was to map different strategies in hackathon event collaboration to achieve better results in sustainability matters in company – university collaboration relationship. This study is based on published materials and experience-based evidence of successful creation of new business ideas by several companies in Russia, Finland and Estonia. In addition to the gained sustainability in operations, the companies have also minimized energy consumption and reduced own and their customers CO2 emissions and carbon footprint.