We make AI something you can get your hands on
Innovation Lab has run hackathons for many years. The recipe has not changed: bring the right people together, give them a sharp problem and little time, and let them build something finished. What is new is that AI now has a seat at the table.
Work with us →Our mission
“To give every company access to AI innovation: not as a project for the future, but as a concrete answer to a real challenge today.”
From a strange new word to a way of working
Innovation Lab was founded in 2001. In the early days, half of every introduction went on explaining what a hackathon was: a short, intense stretch of time where people from different disciplines build something that works, instead of writing a report about what they could have built. Today nobody asks what the word means. They ask what comes out the other end, and that is a better question.
Since then we have delivered more than 120 hackathons, for public agencies, industrial groups and family-owned businesses. We have run them in factory halls, in council chambers and in meeting rooms without windows. What you learn from that many is not a model. It is timing: when to let a team stay stuck a little longer because they are about to work something out, and when to step in because they are about to waste two hours.
We are hired to facilitate processes that are energetic, engaging and tightly structured at the same time. Those three things pull in different directions, and balancing them is the whole job. The framework has to be firm enough that nobody loses the thread mid-afternoon, yet loose enough that a team can throw away its original idea an hour later without the day falling apart. You cannot shout energy into a room. It comes from people sensing that what they are working on is actually going somewhere.
When the large language models arrived, we did not hesitate. We started using AI in our own processes long before it became an item on anyone’s strategy. Today it is part of the whole journey: when we frame the problem, when participants build, and when we wrap up afterwards. We do not give lectures about AI. We work with it while participants have their hands on it, and they take the habit home.
What we believe in
Results, not slides
We measure success in prototypes that work, not in beautiful presentations. Every hackathon produces something you can take home and use.
Your challenge, our mission
We tailor every hackathon to your specific business challenge. No copy and paste programmes.
AI first in everything we do
We use AI ourselves in every phase: from framing the challenge to facilitation and follow-up. We practise what we sell.
Skills that stay
A hackathon is not a one-off event. We build AI skills into your organisation that last.
Just as important: what we are not
Three things we would rather say straight away, so you do not spend a meeting finding them out.
We are not a consultancy
You do not get a report with recommendations on what you could do. You get something that runs, and an agreement on who owns it on Monday.
We are not trainers
Nobody sits and listens for hours. Everyone builds something, including the people who started the day by saying they are not technical. They are usually the ones who surprise us most.
We are not tech enthusiasts at your expense
If we can see that your challenge should not be solved with AI, we will tell you before you have paid for a day. It has cost us work. It has also given us clients who come back.
Four people, not a logo
Jarle Kondrup, Mads Thimmer, Mads Voigt Hingelberg and Chris Weier. The people who plan the programme with you are the same people who stand in the room on the day. We do not send out a new hire and hope for the best.
Between us we cover the four things a hackathon needs: a strategic overview, technical depth in AI, process leadership that keeps the energy up, and an understanding of what it takes in an organisation for the things that get built to actually be used.
We facilitate hackathons in English or Danish, so international teams can take part on equal terms.
Meet the facilitators87% of teams have a working prototype within 48 hours, across our formats. The average score of 4.9 out of 5 comes from our internal satisfaction surveys and evaluation meetings with former clients and participants.