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Turkey supports their own ‘Coronathon’ hackathon

Innovative response

The Ministry of Industry and Technology together with the private sector organized a Coronathon event for entrepreneurs who have potential to provide technology based solutions for COVID-19 pandemic. This event was held on 21-22 March 2020. More than 150 projects competed and more than 150 mentors took roles to help entrepreneurs.

TÜBİTAK is providing complementary support to the awardees of this Coronathon competition in collaboration with some of the selected Technology Transfer Offices. Technology transfer offices (Boğaziçi University TTO, İTÜ Çekirdek and METU TTO) will use a top-up fund provided by TÜBİTAK in order to support entrepreneurs through their accelerator programs. These technology transfer offices also act as implementing bodies evaluating the business plans of young and innovative candidate entrepreneurs in the Techno-Entrepreneurship Support Program of TÜBİTAK.

Specific issues addressed and anticipated impact

Hackathons have been shown to be a popular means of sourcing various solutions for governments who do not have the agility, skills or foresight to anticipate and create solutions to coronavirus.

Organisations/institutions involved

Ministry of Industry and Technology; TÜBİTAK

Level(s) of government:
  • National/Federal government
  • Private Sector

Issues being addressed:

  • Crowdsourcing solutions

Response tags:

Date Submitted:

15 April 2020