I learnt some great definitions around creativity and innovation at a conference I was involved with recently. To wit, "Creativity is the generation of novel and useful ideas."
The speaker (Dr David Hall) recommended that the search for Creativity often needs to start with generating something novel and useless - this can then inspire the useful application to emerge. Only when we pursue the novel, however useless, do we really open ourselves up to surprising creativity.
This Hackathon seems to fully embrace that principle, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if many of those who participated take the germ of an idea and develop it further into the useful space.
[1] http://jacobaldridge.com/business/3-blockages-to-creativity-...