In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Alita Harvey-Rodriguez, founder of MI Academy and creator of the Retail HackGames, plus three members of the winning team, Jo Harris, Peter Knock and Yas Grigaliunas. Sharing their experiences of this unique event designed to inspire innovation and challenge traditional ways of working, the panel discuss what the process looked like, the insights that emerged and how they can be incorporated into day to day working life. We get to hear the winning pitch and find out about the HackGames mark 2.
While MI have an amazing framework for delivering such an event, there’s no reason you can’t run this internally. Remember the main message around involving and developing your own people? To help with this, we asked Alita to send through some of the rules they set for the Hackathon, here they are:
1. Let the voting do the talking. You might think your ideas are ace, but let your team decide with voting
2. Don’t be a tool. While we have tech tools in the game, we don’t want you being one
3. Be limitless with your ideas. Imagine you had a limitless budget, Academy Award winning actors to act it out and gravity wasn’t a problem. Go big!
Aliita and Team Steve have shared tools, videos and the winning pitch which you can find at the MI blog. There’s lots to get you started!
I could feel an essence of purpose and professionalism that just made me want to lift my game
Alita Harvey-Rodriguez
Questions answered in this episode include…
- What are the Retail HackGames and what did you set out to achieve?
- What tools did you use to conduct the whole process virtually?
- What insights came out of the process?
- What tips can you give retailers to be more innovative in their day to day business?
- MI Academy
- Slack
- Power Retail
- Miro
- Shopify Plus free platform guide (sponsored)
- Klarna (sponsored)
