Some amazing ideas are said to have begun with a few inspired words and a quickly drawn diagram on the back of a handy paper napkin.

The Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Napkin Challenge has finished for another year with students and staff showing that innovation and entrepreneurship is really thriving at the University of Auckland.

The Napkin Challenge provides napkins in locations around the campus for students and staff from all faculties to share their venture ideas in a fun, easy way by writing or drawing on a napkin while having lunch in their common areas or at a University café.

Winning ideas this year covered an amazing range of creative solutions to today’s problems;

Jinny Park – Education and Social Work – tracking student attendance at school with a tag in/out smart card

Sohail Abdulla – Engineering – eradicating malaria carrying mosquitos with an affordable electronic device

Nadia Sussman – Law and Arts – bringing poetry performance to offices with lunch deliveries, “would you like a poem with that?”

Mandy Bergstrom – Medical and Health Sciences – product labelling with a points system to show consumers the environmental impact of their purchase

Andrew Patterson – Business School – a social enterprise providing affordable employment advice to those who need it but are prevented by the expense

Cheryl Cheong – Arts – a water use monitor in the shower head which flashes a light when you use too much water (we loved your cool drawing Cheryl)

Georgia Bryan – Education and Social Work – hands-free horse cleaning soap

Sam Paritt – Medical and Health Science – New QR code with mobile app for medicine schedule and reminder systems

Dan Richard – Business and Science – app to allow deaf people to communicate with emergency services easily in a crisis situation

And our grand prize winner was Johanna Douglas – Business and Science for her awesome idea for an app that would allow people to provide parking space in their driveway when it was not being used by them for access, like an “Airbnb for driveways”. What a creative solution for city parking hassles Johanna.

It was both fun and inspiring to read all the great ideas that were submitted for the Napkin Challenge and choosing winners was really difficult. A huge thank you to all those who took the time to share their many creative and innovative ideas with us. Keep doodling on those napkins, you never know what might happen.

Have a great idea and want to develop it further? How about participating in Summer Lab or Climathon to help take your idea to the next level.