80% of Employees Participate in AI Hackathon, Accelerating New Value Creation Through Generative AI

At Weathernews, we launched a company-wide "Generative AI Hackathon" in March 2024 as an initiative to promote AI adoption across all employees. Approximately 900 employees—representing 80% of our workforce—participated in this hackathon. By integrating generative AI into their daily workflows, participants have delivered tangible results, including significant time savings in operational tasks.

What motivated us to launch the generative AI hackathon, and which ideas have been implemented in practice? We spoke with Hideaki Dewa, Executive Officer and Head of Technology & Product, who has been spearheading the initiative, and Takayasu Morishita, who is involved in AI-powered service development.

Non-Engineers Take Center Stage in Generative AI Hackathon: Individual Employee AI Adoption Drives Company Growth

Dewa: While AI utilization in programming and other technical areas had been progressing primarily among engineers, non-engineering employees had limited exposure to AI, and we hadn't achieved company-wide implementation.

However, with AI's rapid advancement in recent years and its increasing integration into society, some of our teams began exploring AI solutions to address operational challenges. Soon after, we were able to automate previously manual tasks through AI implementation, and positive results began to emerge. These early successes convinced us that promoting AI adoption company-wide would deliver significant benefits and drive organizational growth.

We recognized that for the company to grow, all employees needed to harness the full potential of AI. So we decided to launch a company-wide generative AI hackathon to create opportunities for everyone to experience generative AI firsthand.

In the generative AI hackathon, non-engineering staff form teams to develop operational improvement tools. Engineers with extensive AI development experience participate as mentors, but it's the operators, sales staff, administrative personnel, and others who take the lead on the actual development work.

Over 180 Ideas for Operational Improvement Using Generative AI!

Dewa: Each hackathon generated around 20 ideas, and with every iteration, AI adoption spread throughout the company. Ultimately, including events held at our global locations, we generated over 180 operational improvement ideas.

Morishita: I participated in the hackathon as a mentor, drawing on my experience in AI-powered service development. I was impressed by the numerous ideas focused on text-based operations, such as automated document creation and proposal generation. Post-event surveys revealed that about 40% of participants felt they could "actually implement these in their daily work," and several ideas from the event have been put into practice, including automated advertising report creation and automatic input of vessel information.

Dewa: The biggest benefit of conducting the generative AI hackathon was witnessing everyone actively embrace AI usage. Many people, including our overseas staff, experienced AI for the first time through this hackathon, and there was a noticeable increase in the company-wide mindset of "let's try it first, let's build something." Not only engineers but also back-office and sales staff now seem to recognize the potential of what can be achieved using AI.

We also received feedback from employees who rarely interact with engineers that "it was wonderful to have an opportunity to communicate with engineers." I felt that beyond the direct benefits of AI adoption, the hackathon also served to enhance internal communication.

Continuing More Advanced AI Hackathons with Global Colleagues

Dewa: We're currently expanding AI adoption to our global locations, including Copenhagen and Oklahoma. I believe having such a large-scale, company-wide AI initiative with 80% employee participation is quite rare among other companies.

While this iteration focused on generative AI hackathons, we'd like to explore themes beyond generative AI in the future. For example, we want to tackle hackathons centered around more advanced AI capabilities, such as AI that can autonomously execute tasks.

Morishita: Through continued events, we aim to enhance employees' AI awareness and make this an initiative that drives new value creation.

The AI Era is a Tailwind: Fully Utilizing AI for a New Growth Phase

Dewa: We're not only actively incorporating AI into daily operations but also planning to develop AI services that autonomously support our customers' operations. Our company has contributed to solving customer challenges for 40 years. Because our operational staff deeply understand customer operations and have accumulated years of expertise, we believe we can provide services that meet needs even when utilizing AI.

I think this is where the significance lies in having operational staff, not just engineers, participate in AI hackathons.

Morishita: We engineers want to create an environment where AI can be used smoothly by organizing vast amounts of meteorological data into forms that AI can easily utilize, enabling operational staff to actively engage in AI adoption.

Dewa: AI and meteorology have very high compatibility, and we consider the development of AI technology to be a tailwind for Weathernews. We want to constantly and actively catch up with new tools and technologies and incorporate the latest technology.