Coordination, Leadership, and Cooperation Work of Creative Teams During a Virtual Hackathon for Urban Innovations in Times of Crisis

Innovation has evolved from the result of a lonesome inventor’s work to a creative team process. Interdisciplinary teams provide a broader range of scientific discoveries, and teams as a working model are established in all organisations, in physical and virtual settings. The unexpected pandemic and restrictions on personal interaction fostered a growing scientific interest in research on the successful coordination and leadership of teams and auspicious cooperation formats in virtual spaces. For the study, the analysis of creative team coordination and cooperation work during a virtual hackathon was chosen. As a time-limited and intensive event, a hackathon has the potential to harness collective intelligence and foster creativity and innovation. The learnings generated in this field will provide hypotheses for future work outside the usual constraints and processes of the workplace. Therefore, a case study based on the constructivist grounded theory was carried out in the research framework of an EU project during the organisation and implementation of a virtual hackathon that aimed to generate ideas for urban innovation and occurred in times of crisis. Data source triangulation based on group discussions, expert interviews, formal stakeholder meetings, and archive documents helped to investigate creative teams’ coordination and cooperation work in this specific virtual workplace. A selective perspective on the coordination variable leadership uncovered promising virtual leadership practices. Results indicate that virtual hackathons rely on the interdependency and equal application of critical coordination and cooperation work structures, mechanisms, and processes.