In June, HBS IT held its second annual Hackathon, a three-day event where staff members from across the organization come together in teams to problem solve and ideate around a common theme. This year, that theme was “Learning and Working with AI,” and teams were challenged to explore how AI could be strategically employed in IT’s work.
AI has easily dominated the tech world over the last couple years, with AI bots springing up across the industry at record speed and new use cases for the technology being discovered every day. The tech world continues to evolve, and HBS IT strives to remain at the forefront.
The teams put their heads together and generated project ideas that fell into six buckets: communication, automated workflows, knowledge, resource allocation + time management, data, and applications. To bring those ideas to life, staff could use multiple HBS-supported tools, including ChatGPT, Harvard’s AI Sandbox, Microsoft Copilot for M365, and Amazon’s Party Rock. This year, HBS IT partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the Hackathon, and teams were provisioned with temporary AWS sandbox accounts. AWS staff were available on-site for the first two days of the Hackathon for coaching and assistance with AWS tools.
The 15 teams had two days to work on their ideas before presenting their proposals on day three to the rest of the HBS IT staff, who then voted for their favorites. The final presentations varied and included processes to analyze Outlook calendars and populate timecards, tools that will accurately summarize meeting notes and keep track of action items, and a tool to find answers within organization-wide document repositories. At the end of the event, for an extra bit of fun, five teams were awarded with superlatives: Biggest Game Changer, Best Presentation, Super Solutioning, Best Teamwork, and Most Cutting Edge.
These project ideas have planted the seeds of the potential benefits that AI holds for HBS IT, and it’s exciting to see the innovations the organization could implement going forward. A huge thank you to the HBS IT staff who participated and AWS for their services, but even bigger thanks to the Business Relationship Managers for planning and producing the Hackathon. The event gave IT an excellent opportunity to think and work together outside of their usual workflows and to bond and have fun together, further fostering a comfortable and friendly work culture.
Hacking AI with HBS IT
