The Management 2.0 Hackathon: Using the inspiration of the web to hack management

It seems that every day on the Web we discover a new solution to a problem. Whether it’s a new online resource that helps us manage our finances or an online community that has organized to share information and address an issue, the Web is incredibly effective and offers endless inspiration.

And yet it seems that in our organizations, management is stuck in a state of 1.0—where bureaucratic command-and-control models make it hard for us to keep up with competition and the pace of change.

Why can’t management be as effective and inspiring as the Web? Or our organizations be as adaptive?


Over the last seven months, Jonathan Opp and I have had a chance to address those questions firsthand with a team of volunteer hackers through the Management 2.0 Hackathon.

The Management 2.0 Hackathon was designed to deeply explore a simple idea: How can we apply the principles of the Web—which is already adaptable, innovative, and inspiring—and use them to reinvent management for the future?

Download the Management 2.0 Hackathon report now >>

The Management 2.0 Hackathon, a joint collaborative effort by the MIX, Saba, and the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, was inspired by hacakathons in the world of software development. A management hackathon is a short, intense, coordinated effort to develop useful hacks—innovative ideas or solutions—that can be implemented by organizations to overcome barriers to progress and innovation.

For the Management 2.0 Hackathon, we wanted to discover what pathologies were holding backing Management 1.0 today, what principles of the Web could inspire Management 2.0, and where companies are already applying these principles successfully. The process would culminate in the development of management hacks, designed to be practical experiments and practices that any organization could apply today.

More than 900 progressive management practitioners and technologists from around the world joined this hands-on effort—sharing perspectives, contributing ideas, and generating hacks.

It was a massive collaborative effort that yielded some very compelling results.

We’re proud to introduce this report that showcases the efforts of these management innovators. The report was produced together with a volunteer editorial team of hackathon members. It features an overview of the process that we followed for the hackathon, as well as summaries of some of the most promising hacks. Each summary includes a link to the full hack on the MIX.

Several of these innovative hacks will be featured at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this week in Boston.

The results summarized in this report are the product of months of hard work and intense collaboration. But the hackathon model not only produces inspiring thinking and innovative ideas, it provides the opportunity to work with leading management thinkers worldwide and establish relationships that last long after the hackathon is over. We continued to be inspired by the people we met through this process.

While this report highlights the thinking of many of the hackathon contributors, we wanted to single out the following people for special thanks:

Hack contributors
Success of the Management 2.0 Hackathon is the result of the generous contributions of the following individuals, who each contributed to at least one of the full hacks highlighted in the report.

Aaron Anderson
Jack Bergstrand
Ben Biddle
Alberto Blanco
Stefan Blobelt
Stephen Danelutti
Robin Deacle
Josh Allan Dykstra
Ken Everett
Todd Fitch
Sam Folk-Williams
Antonio Galvan
Dina Grasko
Terri Griffith
Michael Grove
Vlatka Hlupic
Jan Robert Johnsen
Matt Johnson
Kevin Jones
Laurence Lock Lee
David Mason
Deborah Mills-Scofield
Keely Nugent
Edna Pasher
Ron Pels
Christian Petersen
Susanne Ramharter
Nyla Reed
Greg Stevenson
Jim Stikeleather
Ian Stobie
Ellen Weber
Ben Willis
Gianvittorio Zandona
Michele Zanini

Hackathon Report Editorial Committee

In addition to participating as hackathon contributors, the following individuals volunteered to help produce this report highlighting our work.

Ben Biddle

Alberto Blanco
Thomas Butta 

Silvia Colombo

Vlatka Hlupic 

Anish Kumarswamy

Polly LaBarre 

Antonio Galvan

Milind Pansare 

Madhusudan Rao 

Ben Willis 

Michele Zanini

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Congratulations and thank you to everyone who participated in the hackathon.

Chris Grams and Jonathan Opp
Management 2.0 Hackathon Guides