Verve Launches 'Hackathon' Innovation Approach

Online community specialist Verve has launched 'Hackathon', an approach combining employee and customer feedback for new product or concept development.

The firm, which also has offices in the US, Canada and Romania, was founded at the end of 2008 as a specialist in quant community panels for research. Developed in association with several clients and now rolled out as part of the company's Innovation practice, the new 'Verve Hackathon' approach aims to support idea creation, development, and concept validation during a five-day period.

Verve recently used this approach with Virgin Holidays, culminating in a two-day ideation workshop which tapped into customer feedback to inform and validate ideas resulting from employee ideation activities. As well as creating new ideas, Verve says its approach has enabled Virgin Holidays' employees to engage with the innovation process in a customer-centric way.

Verve CEO Andrew Cooper (pictured) says the new method is 'a great way of unlocking the significant knowledge employees have of their own company's capabilities and developing fresh ideas of how it can deliver for customers'. He adds: 'Plugging in the customer voice to the process as the ultimate arbiter of what good looks like is the key trick. This ensures those ideas which customers are going to want to spend their money on are fast-tracked and those which don't hit the mark are quickly killed off'.

Web site: www.addverve.com .