Looking for a fun exercise in collaboration for your next work team meeting? Try the Marshmallow Challenge!

“The Marshmallow Challenge is a remarkably fun and instructive design exercise that encourages teams to experience simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation and creativity.

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.”

The ingredients cost only a few dollars and the time invented is less than a dollar. If you would like to try the Marshmallow Challenge at your next meeting, here are Step by step instructions for the Marshmallow Challenge.

That’s how challenge founder Tom Wujec describes the exercise. Tom is an award-winning innovator who specializes in fostering creative thinking. See him describe the project in this video at TED:

(If you can’t see the video above, try these direct links to Ted.com video and transcript or to the video on YouTube.)

Videos of teams engaged in the Marshmallow challenge:

Watch teams of varying ages as they participate in the Marshmallow Challenge.

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