Regional workforce-innovation hackathon at Waterkant Festival, Kiel
Cross-sector solutions to a 326,000-person workforce gap
About
KräfteHack is a 1.5-day workforce hackathon co-founded by KNK Group and the regional newspaper Kieler Nachrichten, hosted at Kiel's Waterkant Festival — Northern Germany's largest startup and innovation gathering. It exists to confront a hard number: Schleswig-Holstein is projected to face a skilled-worker gap of roughly 326,799 people by 2035, hitting health, social services, the trades and manufacturing hardest. The format unites government, business, students and civil society around three themes: inclusive multi-generational workplaces, the appeal of physically demanding roles, and tapping untapped talent pools.
Challenge
A hackathon that just 'brings people together' to talk about labour shortages is theatre, not innovation. The real challenge was designing a format that could move very different stakeholders — political leaders, corporate HR heads, vocational educators, students, career-switchers — from acknowledging the problem to prototyping solutions in 36 hours, with people's lived experience at the centre and outcomes that companies could actually consider implementing. It also had to bridge four worlds — government, business, education, civil society — that don't share a vocabulary.
Solution
Designed and orchestrated the whole event from first principles. Co-created challenge statements with government and business stakeholders so teams formed around real, lived problems rather than abstractions. Translated Design Thinking and Lean Startup methods specifically for a non-technical audience — tradespeople, HR professionals and educators using the same tools as product teams. Managed the facilitator team across parallel tracks and ran the jury process with senior political stakeholders, judging outcomes on feasibility and readiness, not novelty alone.
Outcome
Three winning solutions came out of the room — HUP, Jobhafen and PIA — and the format has run annually since 2022, establishing itself as Northern Germany's main convening on the workforce question.
He designed the day so executives, educators, students and people in the trades could build solutions together — and actually see what might work.
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