Spaghetti Tower
A team challenge popularised by Tom Wujec where small groups have 18 minutes to build the tallest freestanding structure that can support a marshmallow on top — using only spaghetti, tape, and string. Despite its simplicity, it reliably generates powerful insights about collaboration, prototyping, iteration, and the failure of planning-heavy approaches. Business school graduates consistently perform worse than kindergarteners.
Comment l'animer
- 1
Divide participants into teams of 4–5 people.
- 2
Give each team: 20 sticks of spaghetti, 1 yard of masking tape, 1 yard of string, 1 marshmallow.
- 3
Rules: the marshmallow must be on top. The structure must be freestanding. The tape may be broken into pieces.
- 4
Set a timer for 18 minutes. Begin.
- 5
At 'stop', measure the height of each freestanding structure with the marshmallow on top.
- 6
Debrief: 'What strategies worked? What failed? When did you first test the marshmallow? What does this tell us about prototyping and iteration?'
Conseils
The key insight is that kindergarteners beat business school grads because they iterate — they put the marshmallow on early and adjust.
Business grads plan, then discover at the last minute the structure can't support the weight.
Frame the debrief around this insight.',
Variantes
Replace spaghetti with other materials. Add a constraint: one team member is 'the client' who can change requirements mid-build. Use as a leadership observation exercise.
Contextes d'utilisation
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