Innovation Blog

Supercreativity in Teams:  Find the Geniuses

By Shlomo Maital

   Do you have highly creative, supercreative, people in your organization?  Are they perhaps hidden, undiscovered?   Here is a way to discover them.   (Faithful blog reader Yoav Medan supplied this example, from marshmallowchallenge.com).   The author of the exercise  is Tom Wujec, a Fellow at Autodesk.

If you need to kickstart a meeting, get a team into a creative frame of mind, or simply want to encourage your organization to think about what it takes to dramatically increase innovation, invest 45 minutes to run a marshmallow challenge.

   The task is simple: in eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow.  The marshmallow needs to be on top.

   Surprising lessons emerge when you compare teams’ performance. Who tends to do the worst? Why? Who tends to do the best? Why? What improves performance? What kills it?

   I suggest altering the exercise slightly.  Why tallest?  Why not,  “most beautiful”?  “strongest”?    Or just — without any “most”, just build it!     

       Put the winning model on display in the lobby, with names of the team members.  

      When you run the marshmallow challenge, provide loud music in the background, and an atmosphere of fun, laughter and excitement.  Allow spectators.  Get the CEO to participate.