Synergy between smart cities' hackathons and living labs as a vehicle for accelerating tangible innovations on cities

Governments, universities and companies around the world are seeking ways to promote innovation in order to build solutions towards Smarter Cities. As smart cities grow, living labs are created as platforms to test these solutions in a real-life context before implementing them on cities. Hosting smart cities' themed hackathons is an excellent way for empowering and engaging citizens to be aware of how their active participation can positively affect the quality of life in their cities. Hence, a synergy between living labs and smart cities' hackathons has been proven successful, more specifically in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico, where a series of biannual smart cities' hackathons has been hosted with concrete results. These hackathons work as a platform that encourages the whole ecosystem which involves government, education, industry and citizens to focus on solving punctual problems in order to achieve a smarter city. The solutions and contributions for smarter cities generated at these events can be in the form of applications, creation of datasets, APIs, hardware, wearables and sensors; which are tangible footprints that can be used for posterior research oriented towards the optimization of the city's processes and services. To maximize the potential of these events, they must follow specific organization guidelines; therefore, a model describing the steps for hackathons to become an enabler platform of innovation in a city's ecosystem is proposed. Following this predetermined model for hosting hackathons, designed by the previous experience of organizing successful events in the city of Guadalajara, but moreover a successful synergy, can lead to the accelerated implementation of innovative assets for smarter cities, generating an economic impact through the development of these resources.