In recent years, the way organizations innovate and develop new solutions has changed considerably. Moving from ‘behind the closed doors’ style of innovating to open innovation where collaboration with outsiders is encouraged, organizations are in the pursuit of more effective ways to accelerate their innovation outcomes. As a result, organizations are establishing creative and entrepreneurial ecosystems, which not only empower employees but also involve many others to co-create new solutions. In this paper, we present a methodology for organizing hackathons, i.e. competition-based events where small teams work over a short period of time to ideate, design, prototype and test their ideas following a user-centric approach to solve a specific challenge. This paper also provides insights into two different hackathons organized in the United Kingdom, and Mexico, as well as a series of 5 hackathons organized in Argentina, Mexico, Switzerland, United Kingdom and in Senegal.