At the international Food Hackathon called "Hack the future of food" in a creative and team atmosphere at Podravka, concepts and solutions for food industry were developed. Even though the trend of hackathon is already a known concept, Podravka's Food hackathon goes beyond the limitations of classic hackathons based on IT or programming through including multidisciplinary teams. Team work based on this hackathon includes promotion of social values and co-creation by industry and community.

Forty contestants, chosen in cooperation with universities (PBF, FER, TVZ, ZŠEM), student association for food innovation PROBION (PBF) and Coolinarika, were divided into teams who have on 22nd and 23rd October 2016 been creating new ideas on themes: food and technology – internet of food, food future - cool food and food and sustainable development.

Participants from Croatia, Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Poland, Algeria, Brazil, France and B&H are all enthusiast students, of various competencies and most creative representative of Coolinarika. They are all food fans, together searching for solutions that food industry is facing on global level.

Their joint goal was to create innovative solutions which take into consideration the values of modern society: sustainability, using new technology and IT, respecting culinary and sensoric features of food, and menthors from Podravka, partnering universities and other industries have helped the contestants to develop their projects into concepts and prototypes which they have presented.

During the hackathon classic work methods were used, such as working in group and elements of playing, where the participants were grouped in smaller multidisciplinary teams and worked on development of their ideas. With Podravka menthors, in leading the hackathon process itself, experts from ILBA participated, the main partner of Food Hackathon and ZŠEM, and as special surprise was an online mentoring of an expert  from Stanford University. Cooperation with leading world teams for food innovations provided an additional quality with this event.

With conference partners, consumers, students and professors, with Food Hackathon Podravka started the process co-creation with community in the spirit of open innovations.

At the end of hackathon, teams briefly presented their solutions, from using practical packaging and food recycling too healthy low-calorie snacks and food usability before end date.

Expert jury consisting of representatives of Podravka and Hackathon partners selected the winners in three categories. In the category of food future/cool food the winner is the team „Food Scientists“ (Ana Carolina Maia Candotti, Rita Aguilar, Lucija Bušić, Sven Krechtl, Darian Hrvoje Zec), who connected food and learning of science through game. Team „PodrAPPka“ (Aldo Topić, Aleksandra Zelder, Elena Mikolaj, Andreja Poljanec, Reslav Hollós) were the best in the category of food and technology /internet of food developing the idea of purchasing products under certain price terms  via online shopping. Category of food and sustainable development /sustainable food ecosystem was best presented by the team „HraniTeam“ (Lucija Boras, Mateja Kobeščak, Giuseppe Cicchetti, Viktor Tarroni, Andrea Maruzzella) with an imaginative idea of how to prevent food vasting. Special reward by the public went to the team „Foodology“ (Marko Božac, Tomislav Bradač, Petar Šegina, Bojana Brnica, Lucija Galić ) who competed in the category of internet of food. 

Podravka Management Board president Zvonimir Mršić congratulated the winners on their ideas and responses to the challenges they presented, and since the hackathon is the advance-guard of the 4th Podravka's international conference "Knowledge in focus" where the rewarded and winning presentations will be presented, and invited everyone on participating at the conference to be held on 24th November 2016 in Zagreb.

Have a look at a series of images taken at the hackathon that make a warm and interesting story:

Hack the future of foodAlbum.pdf

Partners

In organization of this Food Hackathon, Podravka has made partnership with the wider community. 
We have the mentoring and awarding partnership cooperation with: ILBA - a member of InfoDom Group, ZŠEM, university professors Sergej Lugović and Tina Odinsky Zec and with  Stanford University in California (online mentoring).

Lifelong learning Academy  – ILBA, a member of InfoDom Group, is a partner in Food Hackathon organization. During their presentation and additional activities ILBA will present their experiences and mentoring methods and will also award certain prizes during the event. On the occasion of the conference Knowledge in focus, a special edition of the magazine Open Info Trend will issue some interesting articles on innovations, knowledge and learning and  Hackathon as well .

Within its offer, ILBA also offers classical learning and e-learning as well as web education for a successful organization of Hackathon as a part of innovation culture development.