How to build an innovative culture and growth mindset in organisations

Lady writes on paper noteboard at Hack DayIn December 2019, teams from the Science Museum, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and The Royal Air Forces Association met in London as part of Microsoft’s AI for Good initiative. They were all looking for ways AI could help them in their work preserving and enriching our cultural and environmental heritage.

Some of the teams came ready with well-formed ideas. Others had problems that they were looking for AI to potentially solve. What they all had in common was the desire to use this one-day hack to explore the art of the possible. They wanted to use the day to start their own AI journey to explore new and innovative solutions.

Running hacks is an increasingly common way to help organisations make progress with technology, solve real business problems and be more collaborative. Not to be confused with cyberattacks, hacks are ways that teams can creatively overcome limitations or improve processes.

Encouraging employees to build a growth mindset

Whether it is with one day ideation hack like this, or a several day deep dive, hacks provide a great environment, both technically and psychologically, for teams to work together and be productive.

Part of this is rooted in the idea of an agile approach to thinking and a growth mindset. This is where one aims to find solutions to problems, rather than accept that a problem cannot be solved, or feel that they are not empowered or able to solve it.

A critical aspect of hacks is that it takes people out of their day-to-day work. They go into an environment where they collaborate with other teams and have space to think critically of their roles and processes within the business.

There, they can focus on problem solving and are supported by experts who can help them explore different technologies and provide a sounding board for help and guidance.

This helps build a culture of flexible and agile employees who can collaborate across teams and scale business needs on demand, while ensuring they have time to create new ideas or solve problems.

“To exponentially increase their impact by building their own tech capabilities, companies need to invest in their human capital, so that they have a workplace culture that encourages capability-building and collaboration to spawn new, breakthrough concepts.” Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO

Bringing together different skills and experts

Team sit at table at a Hack DayHacks are a safe way to experiment with new ideas and create a culture that allows teams to fail fast – if an idea doesn’t work there aren’t any negative consequences.

Within the important and emerging arena of AI there is often a lot of hype with relatively few people with real experience. Hacks can allow teams to explore the best approach to take, especially in a world where the tools and technologies are evolving at such a rapid pace.

Many teams are approaching AI projects for the first time, and they are wary of potential pitfalls and know that they lack the experience to understand what AI can, and can’t, yet do.

This is where hack days like this work well. It brings together experts with the right skills and background to help proctor and support teams with their ideas.

At Microsoft, we’ve helped support a range of AI projects at recent hacks. Here’s some of them:

  • A car telemetry software company which used Azure AI in their solution to help insurers check if drivers had actually broken a speed limit, a previously slow and error prone task.
  • A marketing company that produced expensive, high-quality brochures, that they traditionally would send them out to all prospective customers, developed a machine learning algorithm to predict likely customers, to enable them to dramatically cut sales costs.
  • An industrial printing company saved more than £50,000 a year on printer ink spoilage costs in the factory by using AI to control the cartridge refill process.
  • An insurance company found that it was able to use AI to process photos taken by drivers of their car after an accident and predict if it was likely to be a write off or whether to get the right support there quickly and efficiently

We’ve also learnt some great lessons you can use from running AI hacks. Here’s a blog looks at how you can run a successful hack.

Helping businesses come up with new solutions and processes

Hacks are not limited to AI. They’re applicable to a whole host of areas in your business, such as:

  • Exploring ways to modernise or update older systems
  • Building proof of concepts to help test ideas before committing resources
  • Skilling teams on new technology and workloads
  • Risk mitigation for business transformation projects

Many organisations run their own internal hacks. This encourages employees to look at improving business processes, unblocking issues, and sharing skills and experiences across departments. It takes relatively little time to run these hacks – the biggest commitment is likely to be getting senior management to buy into the process and provide the support to make them successful.

But by showing your leadership team how hacks can improve processes and bring in relevant new technology to help your organisation, as well as cultivating a culture of innovation and collaboration, you can get support to run your own hacks.

Hackathons, Hackfests and Open Hacks…

Two men in front of laptops at Hack DayHacks come in all sorts of varieties. There are the ideation ones, that are usually more focused on exploring the art of the possible and identifying problems or issues that need addressing. These often lead to deeper, more technical hacks, designed to turn these ideas into code and kick start development.

Microsoft run various Open Hacks. These are focused on specific technology areas such as kubernetes, DevOps, machine learning, and more. Attendees form teams at the event and work together on a set of predefine challenges that test their ingenuity and technical skills. These hacks provide a great way to get deep into a technology through problem solving. It also incorporates an element of gamification to help raise the stakes. Again, having proctors there who know the problems and are well versed in the technology mean attendees can ask for help and guidance at any stage.

Large scale hackfests or hackathons are a regular occurrence around the world. They often take place at weekends and can attract hundreds of developers at a time. Teams come together and work for around 48 hours. They eat, sleep and, code at the venue.

There is often a theme for such hackfests to provide some consistency and focus for the hack. Typically there are prizes for the teams that demonstrate the best solutions at the end. These hacks are great fun to get involved in, to meet new people, and learn new skills.

Creating a collaborative and innovative culture

Hacks and a growth mindset have very much become very much part of the Microsoft culture under the leadership of Satya Nadella. Microsoft’s One Week Hackathon is a global event that brings together employees and customers to help drive new innovations and solve problems. One Week Hackathon has helped create Seeing AI, free app that uses AI to help narrate the world around you, and many other apps and tool designed to empower people and improve accessibility.

Our organisations left the hack day feeling inspired, engaged and ready to use AI to help reach their goals. In order to succeed and stay competitive, every company must adopt best-in-class technology and build their own unique capabilities. Hacks not only help organisations share skills, experiences, and growth while creating breakthrough solutions. They also create a culture of innovation, collaboration, and drive towards a common goal.

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About the author

Image of a smiling man, David GristwoodDavid Gristwood works at Microsoft as a Cloud Solution Architect, and has worked with Azure for more than 10 years, since its pre-launch days when it was known as Red Dog. He spends much of his time helping architects and developers explore Azure and has run numerous hacks over the years.