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Several years ago, here at TED, Peter Skillman introduced a design challenge called the marshmallow challenge.

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And the idea's pretty simple. Teams of four have to build the tallest free-standing structure out of

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20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and a marshmallow.

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The marshmallow has to be on top. And, though it seems really simple,

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it's actually pretty hard, because it forces people to collaborate very quickly.

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And so I thought that this was an interesting idea, and I incorporated it into a design workshop.

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And it was a huge success. And since then,

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I've conducted about 70 design workshops across the world with students and designers and architects,

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even the CTOs of the Fortune 50, and they're something about this exercise

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that reveals very deep lessons about the nature of collaboration,

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and I'd like to share some of them with you.

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So, normally, most people begin by orienting themselves to the task.

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They talk about it, they figure out what it's going to look like,

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they jockey for power, then they spend some time planning, organizing.

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They sketch in and they lay out spaghetti

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They spend the majority of their time assembling the sticks into ever-growing structures and then, finally,

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just as they're running out of time, someone takes out the marshmallow,

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and then they gingerly put it on top, and then they stand back, and Ta-da! they admire their work.

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But what really happens, most of the time, is that the "ta-da" turns into an "uh-oh,"

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because the weight of the marshmallow causes the entire structure to buckle and to collapse.

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So there are a number of people who have a lot more "uh-oh" moments than others,

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and among the worst are recent graduates of business school.

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They lie, they cheat, they get distracted, and they produce really lame structures.

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And of course there are teams that have a lot more "ta-da" structures,

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and, among the best, are recent graduates of kindergarten. And it's pretty amazing.

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As Peter tells us, not only do they produce the tallest structures,

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but they're the most interesting structures of them all.

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So the question you want to ask is: How come? Why? What is it about them?

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And Peter likes to say that, "None of the kids spend any time trying to be CEO of Spaghetti Inc."

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Right. They don't spend time jockeying for power.

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But there's another reason as well.

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And the reason is that business students are trained to find the single right plan, right.

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And then they execute on it. And then what happens is,

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when they put the marshmallow on the top, they run out of time,

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and what happens? It's a crisis. Sound familiar? Right.

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What kindergarteners do differently, is that they start with the marshmallow,

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and they build prototypes, successive prototypes, always keeping the marshmallow on top,

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so they have multiple times to fix ill built prototypes along the way.

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So designers recognize this type of collaboration as the essence of the iterative process.

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And with each version, kids get instant feedback about what works and what doesn't work.

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So the capacity to play in prototype is really essential, but let's look at how different teams perform.

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So the average for most people is around 20 inches, business schools students, about half of that,

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lawyers, a little better, but not much better than that, kindergarteners, better than most adults.

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Who does the very best? Architects and engineers, thankfully.

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39 inches is the tallest structure I've seen. And why is it?

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Because they understand triangles and self-re-enforcing geometrical patterns

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are the key to building stable structures.

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So CEOs, a little bit better than average. But here's where it gets interesting.

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If you put you put an executive admin. on the team, they get significantly better.

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It's incredible. You know, you look around, you go, "Oh, that team's going to win."

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You can just tell beforehand. And why is that?

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Because they have special skills of facilitation. They manage the process, they understand the process.

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And any team who manages and pays a close attention to work will significantly improve the team's performance.

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Specialized skills and facilitation skills, and the combination leads to strong success.

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If you have 10 teams that typically perform, you'll get maybe six or so that have standing structures.

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And I tried something interesting. I thought, let's up the ante once.

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So I offered a 10,000 dollar prize of software to the winning team.

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So what do you think happened to these design students? What was the result?

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Here's what happened. Not one team had a standing structure.

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If anyone had built, say, a one inch structure, they could have taken home the prize.

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So, isn't it interesting that high stakes have a strong impact.

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We did the exercise again with the same students. What do you think happened then?

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So now they understand the value of prototyping.

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So the same team went from being the very worst to being among the very best.

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They produced the tallest structures in the least amount of time.

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So there's deep lessons for us about the nature of incentives and success.

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So, you might ask: Why would anyone actually spend time writing a marshmallow challenge?

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And the reason is, I help create digital tools and processes to help teams build cars

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and video games and visual effects.

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And what the marshmallow challenge does is it helps them identify the hidden assumptions.

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Because, frankly, every project has its own marshmallow, doesn't it.

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The challenge provides a shared experience, a common language, common stance to build the right prototype.

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And so, this is the value of the experience, of this so simple exercise.

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And those of you who are interested, may want to go to marshmallowchallenge.com.

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It's a blog that you can look at how to build the marshmallows.

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There's step-by-step instructions on this.

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There are crazy examples from around the world of how people tweak and adjust the system.

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There's world records on this as well.

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And the fundamental lesson, I believe, is that design truly is a contact sport.

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It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task,

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and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling

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and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand.

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And, sometimes, a little prototype of this experience is all that

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it takes to turn us from an "uh-oh" moment to a "ta-da" moment.

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And that can make a big difference.

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Thank you very much.