Vetter-Hackathon 2022: innovation booster through employee participation

At Vetter, a globally leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), numerous ideas for improving processes and further development of the overall company have been coming directly from colleagues in various departments. To drive this strategy forward, also new collaborative formats are constantly being created, such as the Vetter Hackathon. Over the past few weeks, employees from different corporate divisions applied their talents in a company-wide initiative to develop innovative solutions for various matters and challenges. Particular topics were deliberately unspecified in advance – thus every suggestion was welcomed. Miscellaneous topics in the areas of internal communication and digitalization as well as business ideas that are outside of the current core business were among the many diverse and considered ideas.

“The great interest and strong desire of our employees is to help make Vetter an even better company. As such, our talented staff has always been an enormously important source of new approaches for our improvement. With this innovative format, we deliberately give our employees time to engage with their ideas,” says Vetter Managing Director Peter Soelkner. “Through initiatives such as the Hackathon, our employees have the opportunity to try out new ideas in a safe way, knowing that failure is a recognized option. Only when ideas can grow and change are innovative ideas able to be driven forward,” added Vetter Managing Director Thomas Otto, in outlining the methodology.

Kai Vogt, Senior Vice President Corporate Development/Legal/Corp. Compliance/IT/Innovation, accompanied the development and implementation of the Hackathon with his Innovation Partners team and explains, “The spirit and overwhelming response to the program were very impressive and made us realize right from the start that relevant new pathways can be created here.” A declared goal of the event is to profitably support the successful working methods of the pharmaceutical service provider with fresh impulses and new ways of thinking. “Due to the increasing complexity of our business and simultaneous to our company growth, we will work together in the future on an even more interdisciplinary basis. Failure of new ideas must always be accepted because they offer an opportunity for insights and improvements. According to the motto: “fail fast – learn fast”‘, the earlier a weakness in a good idea is revealed, the faster and better we can fix and refine it,” says Kai Vogt.

The interdisciplinary jury decided on the advancement of six solution approaches which will now be further developed in pilot projects and continuing ideation workshops. These approaches include ideas for more connected document management, digitization projects to further improve quality, and innovative methods for recruiting international professionals.

In the upcoming weeks, the project teams, together with the coaches will be given space, time, and the necessary equipment to push their plans further ahead, for example, by building prototypes or drawing up business plans. This is a further step towards helping the employees’ promising ideas become a reality, and thus make the company benefit from them.

Vetter’s press kit as well as further press releases, printable images and additional background information are available in the download area.