Test your innovation mettle. With a Marshmallow?

This post is based on a recent brown bag session on Driving Service Innovation

You know you need to change - but how?

IT organizations are aware that they need to change in order to keep up. But major transitions in IT, driven by SaaS and Cloud, are showing that old responses to linear change are not enough - as the dinosaurs found out! IT needs to find non-traditional responses to keep up or risk being irrelevant.

Which reminds me of a story. Two managers are in the jungle when a Tiger roars, sending them running.

After a sprint one of them stops and gets out running spikes. The other manager laughs, "You can't outrun the Tiger."

She replies "I don't need to - I just need to out run you!

What's needed is a new Try faster, Fail cheaper mindset.

Test your ability to innovate with a game

This game is a fun way to allow teams to learn about collaboration, creativity and innovation.

The task : teams must build the tallest freestanding tower.

Equipment :

• 20 sticks of spaghetti
• 1m string
• 1m tape
• 1 marshmallow

The trick : the marshmallow must be on top.

The results

We had 5 teams of 4 players competing. It was interesting to see which groups did well and which stumbled.

One team was complete after 10 mins and sat waiting.

Team #2 was able to construct a tower of about 30" - albeit very unstable.

The three other teams failed to beat Team #2, and there were some wobbly Eiffel Towers!

The lessons

Our teams spent time "designing" then attempted a single build - how do they compare with peer groups?

Practiced innovation improves results
Teams that typically do the worst? Recent business school grads!
Teams that do the best? Recent kindergarten grads !!
Why? Kindergarten kids make 4-5 attempts for MBA grads single Hail Mary.

Specialized skills + Facilitation skills = Success

Kinders do well on their own - beating out CEOs.
But CEOs improve when teamed with exec admins!

Incentives + Low skills != Success
Running the game with no incentives produces a distribution curve of tower height.
Describing a significant incentive ($10,000) before the game = NO towers standing!Re-running with the same teams 90 days later (informed activity). Significantly beat the norm.

Planning on playing yourselves?

To get more on the details of the game, read more <here>.

Please feel free to share your experience with others in the comments.