Breaking the Innovation Theatre

Once upon a time, hackathons were raw, real, and honest. Picture a dimly lit room, half-finished pizza boxes, buzzing monitors, and clusters of sleep-deprived geeks pushing out code for the sheer joy of it. There was no HR department hovering, no executive with a camera crew, and certainly no glossy corporate press release. It was about building, tinkering, and sometimes failing spectacularly.

“I was there, Gandalf. I was there 3,000 years ago.”

I know because I lived through that era. I even owned the domain hackathon.co back when it meant something. I eventually sold it for a tidy sum in the low thousands, but the culture had already shifted by then.

Rise of Innovation Theatre

Fast forward to today. Hackathons are no longer underground rituals of code and caffeine. They’ve been absorbed into the corporate bloodstream as carefully managed PR events. Employees are summoned to “ideation labs,” whiteboards are rolled out, and slogans about “moonshots” are plastered on every wall. The outcome is predictable: a few PowerPoint decks, some half-working demos, and a press release bragging about innovation.

“Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.” — Steve Jobs

This is, well, the innovation theatre, an activity that appears to be progress but rarely delivers. The spotlight is not on solving problems but on projecting the image of a forward-thinking company.

Why Hackathons Lost Their Soul

The soul of hackathons was experimentation without consequence. You could build something nobody asked for. You could fail and still walk away with a story. Corporate versions, however, demand alignment with OKRs, strategic goals, and market roadmaps. Risk is scrubbed out, leaving behind “safe” creativity.

When every hackathon idea has to fit into a three-year strategy or ROI model, what you get is a predictable stream of AI chatbots, IoT dashboards, or sustainability-branded apps that never see daylight.

Labs, Accelerators, and Other Stages

It isn’t just hackathons. Corporate innovation labs mushroomed over the last decade, promising to incubate “moonshots.” Most ended up as glass-walled playgrounds in expensive real estate districts, furnished with beanbags, 3D printers, and inspirational quotes.

Executives could tour them, nod approvingly, and tell shareholders: “Look, we’re investing in the future.” Meanwhile, the lab teams were either starved of funding or bogged down in bureaucracy. By the time a prototype was ready, the core business had already shifted priorities. The labs quietly folded, their legacy a set of glossy photos in annual reports.

Moonshot Mirage

Google’s X popularized the term “moonshot.” Suddenly, every large firm wanted one. However, moonshots require patience, capital, and a willingness to take on high-risk ventures. Most companies don’t have the stomach for that. Instead, they staged moonshots as theatre with grand announcements, futuristic slides, and half-hearted pilot projects that fizzled when quarterly results demanded attention elsewhere. It’s easier to signal boldness than to actually bet the company’s future on it.

Breaking Out of the Theatre

So how do we step off the stage? The answer is boring, unsexy, and very real: focus on problems, not performances.

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” — Albert Einstein

Return to the Garage

Innovation theatre thrives because it looks glamorous. Real innovation is usually the opposite: messy, slow, and invisible until it isn’t. The garage, the basement, the spare bedroom are the places where the next real breakthroughs are born.

Perhaps, the cure lies in rediscovering that spirit. Strip away the banners and hashtags, bring back the tinkering, and make space for failure again. Until then, hackathons will remain less about hacking and more about acting.