How are Kindergarteners More Talented than MBAs?
The Key to Innovation Success.
You have twenty sticks of uncooked spaghetti, a yard of string, a yard of masking tape, and a marshmallow. You can break up the spaghetti, string, or masking tape however you need. Your challenge is to work with a team of your peers and build the tallest tower that can hold up the weight of the marshmallow.
You have eighteen minutes. And you’re competing with teams of CEOs, lawyers, and business school students. Oh, and a team of kindergarteners.
Now, which group do you think has the best chance of winning?
Industrial designer Peter Skillman and Dennis Boyle, a founding member of IDEO, developed this “marshmallow challenge” to test creativity in groups. Tom Wujec later conducted over seventy marshmallow challenge workshops between 2006 and 2010. The results were both surprising and consistent. As Skillman described it,
“Kindergarteners, on every objective measure, have the highest average score of any group that I’ve ever tested.”
Kindergarteners’ towers average 27 inches high. CEOs build theirs to 21 inches, lawyers average 15, and business school students tend to come in last at 10 inches.
