I don't know about corporate hackathons, but I think college hackathons are more than a distraction. I've learned useful technical skills from hackathons (including React).
Most importantly, I've been able to reference my experiences in hackathons in behavioral interviews. They're great places to talk about things like working in a team and conflict resolution. Maybe in a corporate environment this could also help employees learn each other's working styles and what works best.
With that said, I don't think I've seen anything massively impressive and important technically. The timeframe is just too short.
which was written by the developers of one generation of Visual Studio about the product they wished they could have built (which would have been much much cooler.) Granted there is a problem of training and bringing people on board quickly but that might mean you end up writing a lot of documentation and explaining things to people.
Most importantly, I've been able to reference my experiences in hackathons in behavioral interviews. They're great places to talk about things like working in a team and conflict resolution. Maybe in a corporate environment this could also help employees learn each other's working styles and what works best.
With that said, I don't think I've seen anything massively impressive and important technically. The timeframe is just too short.