This is Tom Wujec's experience about the team at the TED conference on 20 10: a simple game, using 1 cotton candy, 20 pieces of spaghetti and a meter-long tape to build a tower as high as possible. Who can build it as high as possible? Who can't build it until the end? In this video, Tom gave you some surprising results.

Tom Wujec is a creative commercial visualization promoter. He and his partners promote visual solutions to business problems all over the world.

Two years ago, I led nearly 100 middle and senior managers to complete this challenge in the EMBA special event of Nanjing University Business School. The final result is slightly different from that in the video. More than 70% teams have completed the whole tower construction, but the average height is about 70 cm, and only a handful of them can reach 100 cm.

Most small teams will be conservative. In a pre-built way, some teams with fantastic ideas will end up polarized: they will either die or get excellent grades. In addition, 18 minutes is too short for the team to complete this task, and there are not many internal opinions. Most teams will try a plan soon.

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The following is the adapted experience operation mode.

The following is the full text of the speech:

A few years ago, at the TED conference, Peter Skillman introduced a design challenge called "Cotton Candy Challenge", which was a very simple idea. It takes four people to form an independent team. The tallest building materials are 20 pieces of spaghetti, an adhesive tape, a rope and a marshmallow. Although seemingly simple, it is actually not easy, because it requires people to cooperate quickly. I think this is an interesting idea. I put it in a design seminar and the result was very successful. Since then, I have invited students and designers, architects and even chief technology officers of Fortune 50 companies to participate in more than 70 design seminars around the world. This exercise has given us profound enlightenment in many aspects and taught us the characteristics of cooperation. I'll share some with you here.

Usually, people always finish this task from the beginning of discussion. They discussed for a while and outlined what the result would be like. They argue right and wrong with each other, then spend some time planning and organizing them to draw pictures, and then take out spaghetti. They spend a lot of time assembling spaghetti higher and higher. Finally, time is running out. They took out cotton candy and put it on it carefully. Then they took a step back. Haha, they appreciate their achievements. But many times, what really happens is that "haha" becomes "bad" because the weight of marshmallows has crushed the whole structure.

Some people have more "bad" moments than others, the worst of which is the newly graduated business school students. They lie, they cheat, and they are easily disturbed. Of course, there are also some teams that create more "haha" moments, the best of which is the newly graduated kindergarten children. (Laughter) This is amazing. As Peter told us, they not only built the tallest buildings, but also the most interesting structures.

So you ask, what's going on? What are their characteristics? Peter likes to say, "because no child tries to be the president of spaghetti company." Yes, they didn't spend any time fighting for power, but there is another reason, because business school students are trained to find the right plan, and then they will carry it out. However, the fact is that when they put marshmallows on the top, the limited time ran out, and then the crisis came. Does that sound familiar? Yes, children in kindergarten do things differently. They started with marshmallows, built a model first, and then built more on this basis. In the meantime, they always put cotton candy on top (it won't fall off), so they always have many opportunities to constantly modify the model. So designers realize that this kind of cooperation is an important factor in this interactive process. For each version, children will get feedback quickly. They know what works and what doesn't.

So the ability to grasp the prototype is the real key. Let's see how different teams behave. The average height of the tower built by most people is 20 feet. Business school students are better, about half are lawyers, but not much better. Children in kindergarten are better than most adults. Who did the best? Architects and engineers, thank God. The tallest tower I have ever seen is 39 inches. Why? Because they know that triangles and self-reinforcing geometric patterns are the key to building a stable structure, CEOs are slightly better than average, but interestingly, if you add an administrative assistant to their team, their grades will be much better immediately. (Laughter) This is unbelievable. You look around and say, "Which group will win." You knew it a long time ago. Why? Because they have special simplification skills, they manage the process and they know the process. In short, if any group actively manages and focuses on the work itself, its performance will be significantly improved. The combination of special skills and being good at using simple techniques will bring success. If you have 10 teams to participate in this activity, about 6 teams can build a vertical structure.

I made an interesting attempt. I thought we might as well take a gamble, so I provided the winning team with software worth $65,438+million. Guess how the design students will react? What was the result? This is the result. None of the teams completed a standing building. Even if any team completes an inch of construction, they can get the trophy back. So, interestingly, high bonuses will have a great impact. Then we repeat this activity among the same students. Guess what the result is? This time, they knew the value of making sample models, so the worst group became the best group. They completed the tallest building in the least time, which has profound educational significance for us and reveals the essence of return and success.

So, you may ask: Why would anyone take the time to write such a marshmallow challenge? The reason is that I can use electronic tools and processes to help people make cars, video games and simulate visual effects. The marshmallow challenge teaches us to identify some hidden assumptions, because frankly, every project has its own marshmallows. This challenge provides a shared experience. A common way to deal with problems in the same language is the valuable experience that this simple exercise can provide us.

If you are interested, you can go to marshmallowchallenge.com website, which is a blog that you can read and tell you how to build a marshmallow building. There are concrete steps and strange examples about how people adjust the system all over the world, and there are also world records.

Moreover, I believe that the most fundamental teaching idea is that design is actually an exchange movement, which requires us to put all our thoughts into the task and meet the challenges we face with our best state of mind, our perception and our actions. Sometimes, the experience of a small model will help us turn a "bad" moment into a "haha" moment, and the result will be very different.

thank you