Innovation Lab Opportunities: Hackathons and Beyond, #Q8vsCovid-19 a UNDP Kuwait Perspective

Aiming to organize a series of Innovation Lab Opportunities to identify creative ideas to address COVID-19 related challenges, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), and the Kuwait Fund for Advancement of Science (KFAS) launched the first Hackathon series in Kuwait namely the “s#Q8vsCovid19” Hackathon 

The 1st competition “Hackathon” aimed to challenge local SMEs to introduce new and innovative business approaches to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic locally. The purpose of the hackathon was to create robust, resilient, and sustainable ideas for Kuwait.

Twenty energetic teams competed over the Hackathon to address two main Covid-19 challenges in the areas of supply-chain, healthcare, and wellbeing, two ideas were selected by the evaluation panel to be the winners of the Hackathon Competition. 

Mr. Zubair, an entrepreneur, and Solution Director of the first winning SME expressed his appreciation on how much design thinking helped shaping their ideas and concept into a winning business case. He was happy about the experience after winning the 1st prize in a national innovation Competition in Kuwait. The team won the prize for proposing a solution of Integrated Digital Health Records System that allows patients access to their own medical and health records. The SME wanted to implement it in Kuwait to give patients access to their records and to link with Health Service providers.

Video link here 

Mr. Musaed, a Kuwaiti Entrepreneur, and the Director of Operations of the second winning SME and member of the winning team talked about how winning the hackathon prize helped them in making the ideas come to fruition, and gave the opportunity to connect directly with development partners in Kuwait to explore further ideas for implementation.

Video link here

Following the success of the Hackathon, UNDP and GSSCPD agreed to expand the Hackathon series #Q8vsCovid-19 in partnership with the World Bank, and symbolic financial support from UNDP offices in Saudi Arabi and Bahrain. Accordingly, the 2nd Innovation Competition named as the “Regional Ideathon for Arab States” was organized. The participants were over 800 from 18 Arab countries worked in teams to identify specific challenges facing public sector entities and propose innovative ideas for solutions that can make adaptation to the new normal effective and efficient. Teams were encouraged to think of solutions that will improve collaboration, optimize interactive engagement, breakdown organizational silos, and encourage knowledge sharing within and across organizations, which can eventually be translated into regular work settings as well.

The participants enjoyed extensive training by more than 35 coaches from multidisciplinary backgrounds consisting of advisors from various fields, ranging from innovation advisors, business administration, science, and public administration professionals. The coaches facilitated Design Thinking, provided potential examples, and invigorated conversations/discussions amongst participating team members to arrive at a set of solutions.

Out of 77 innovative proposals in various sectors, e.g., education, government services development & automation, environment, and food security, 23 proposals reached the semi-final stage, and three of them won the Ideathon prizes.

UNDP and its partners will continue testing and promoting quality ideas with the aim to support the development public sector productivity in the region and globally.

Full webinar video here