What is the recipe for a successful hackathon?

LabCorp had its second annual “Innovation Days” (or hackathon) event in February, 2020. The event was a success, and this post describes the secret ingredient that helped make it a success: Lipton® Onion Soup Mix. The soup mix captures the essence of a successful hackathon… some functional, and some personal to the LabCorp leadership.

The first reason that the soup mix embodies the spirit of the hackathon is simple: the product is rarely used as it was intended: to make soup. In fact, the soup mix launched into culinary notoriety in the early 1950s for its role in a non-soup recipe: potato chip dip. Referred to as “California Dip” originally, this recipe takes bland sour cream and gives it a flavorful zing and distinctive texture. For over half a century, this soup mix has been a party favorite thanks to people hacking a recipe and using materials in an unexpected manner. The benefit of the soup mix as a dip enhancer is that it helps speed up the process of making a consistently flavorful dip. For people participating in a hackathon, this is something to look for: can hackathon ideas or aspects of the hackathon projects be applied to existing processes to help streamline them?

The journey of “inventing” the soup mix also captures the essence of the hackathon. The engineer who helped create this soup mix had failed years earlier. He was not trying to make soup during the Second World War, he was trying to save lives. So he invented a - sadly ineffective - method for freeze-drying blood that could be reconstituted on the battlefield to save lives. His vision for “dried blood” being used on the battlefield was not viable. Let’s hope it did not require too many “QA” folks to realize this product was DOA. Years later, however, it was the method of freeze-drying that was in his mind when he helped design Lipton® Onion Soup Mix.

LabCorp CIO, Lance Berberian told the origin story of Lipton® Onion Soup Mix as the keynote speaker during the Innovation Days event. Mr. Berberian recounted the story from his uncle, and, like many stories told by uncles, we hope it to be true. The take-away message, as it relates to hackathons: remember your failed attempts. Aspects of your failed attempts may be core to your future successes.

Mr. Berberian was very engaged in the hackathon. In fact, his leadership team was front-and-center on launch day as well as on presentation day. The story about his uncle was powerful because it set the tone for the event: experiment, learn, network, and expect the unexpected. And the unexpected did happen during the event. Near the end of presentation day, a participant in the audience suddenly collapsed and began seizing. Many folks rushed to help and call 911. As a compassionate leader, Mr. Berberian was on the front-lines of the incident, and he stayed with the sick colleague while we waited for an ambulance to arrive. This, I believe, captures the true secret ingredient of a successful hackathon: engaged leadership.