Takeaways of participating in a Hackathon in a global bank

Recently I participated in a Hackathon in a global bank.

A "Hack"-athon is about pushing the limits of innovation and bring new solutions that can add value to their business.

Well my participation was very short when I came to set up a Tibero Database to present it as an alternative to Exadata and the Hackathon team informed me that only approved software can be used in Hackathon from their Software repositories.

How they expect to innovate when they limit that much the scope of a "Hack"-athon?

Asking myself, unfortunately, the rigorous process that software architects are following to adopt new software is described below:

With the pandemic, crippling IT events for nearly 2 years, I am feeling a slow-down of innovation because of the restrictions and the natural way people discover software.

I have my criticism about how slow companies adopt new software but the pandemic had worsen this process and people should be more open and curious about discovering new solutions but after many years, I have found that people rely on friends only and the majority of software architects are googleing for solutions instead of testing/investigating themselves what else might be available for them to try.