The document discusses a talk given at a PTI Conference about hackathons and their importance for established organizations like Deutsche Boerse. The speaker notes that hackathons allow organizations to reinvent themselves by coming up with new products and services and solving problems in a weekend rather than through traditional development approaches. Key themes of hackathons discussed are that they challenge organizations, force people out of their comfort zones, and introduce the concept of failure as necessary for progress. Examples of successful brands like Apple that leverage co-creation through ecosystems are provided to illustrate the power of hackathons.

1. PTI Conference Deutsche Boerse Talk Notes 22 March 2018
Good afternoon and welcome to this session about hackathons. For the title I gave to my talk
Hacken...D Boerse, I need to acknowledge some friends of mine in Berlin who hack banks
for a living. Their motto is Hack/Mack the Bank. Their philosophy is if you don’t hack it how
can you make the stuff you want or if you don’t break it how can you remake/rebuild it in the
image/way you want. BTW they are hired by banks to run hackathons.
The overall message I would like you to come away with from today’s talk is that hackathons
and indeed a hacking mentality are essential toolkits for established organizations, like
DBoerse, as they try and wrestle with reinventing themselves and come up with new
products and services and fix old problems.
There are 5 key theme of hackathons I would like you to know:
1) Hacking is a philosophy
a method
an attitude
a mindset
and a way of doing things
that can be applied to solve any business problem
2) Hacking is a great example of organized chaos where not just
technologists but folks from business, marketing, operations, HR, and
finance and in financial services risk, compliance, and security all come
together to solve business problems or create new products and services
3) Hackathons challenge the way organizations work by showing what can
be done over a weekend rather than the traditional approach to product
development and problem solving
4) Hackathons force senior management and everyone involved out of their
comfort zone
5) And finally, hackathons introduce the reality of failure as the price to pay if
you want to get things done.
There are several topics I will explore today to illustrate and explain the power of
hackathons:
Firstly the notion of Big ideas and in particular those that have drive financial services. Then
I will look at the Top 50 Global brands and how great brands solicit irrationality ‘loyalty &
passion’. In particular I will look at Apple and how it leveraged its franchise in computers and
the fanatical loyalty of its customers to launch firstly iTunes, then the iPhone, and then the
App store. The App store will be 10 years old this summer. This ecosystem, where others
co-create but Apple curates products and services.
I will then explore why hackathons are the embodiment of co-creation and will look at some
hack examples. Then I would like to introduce a word of caution: the data we use in financial
services is different from the world of Google. Financial service data needs to be timely and
© Copyright Liam Ó Móráin 2018 wjmoran@gmail.com +353 87 905 8386

2. accurate while Google needs to be just approximate. For example: bank account balances
and stock prices have to be accurate and up to date while a search for a person or a product
on Google can be approximate with the result being found on the 2 or 3 page and doesn’t
have to be timely or up to date.
And lastly I will explain why the business model, technology infrastructure, and operations
supporting financial services today need to die before they are reborn; hence the use of the
RIP acronym.
© Copyright Liam Ó Móráin 2018 wjmoran@gmail.com +353 87 905 8386