The Marshmallow Challenge – How frequent failing increases success

"in 18 minutes, each group can use 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, and one yard of string, and one marshmallow to build the tallest structure with the marshmallow on the top."

Reading time: 2 min

The marshmallow challenge (text) (YouTube video) is a team design challenge involving the following:

Source: Marshmallow Challenge

Tom Wujec administered this challenge to many groups of people, from students, to designers and architects, to CTOs of the Fortune 50.

These are the results:

Source: Build a tower, build a team | Tom Wujec (YouTube)

Architects and engineers consistently performed the best (thankfully), producing the tallest towers with the highest marshmallow using their knowledge of how to design and build stable structures.

Recent graduates of business school apparently consistently perform the worst.

Yet, kindergarten graduates consistently perform well-above average.

Some reported reasons for the difference between business school graduates and kindergarten graduates are:

• Kindergarteners do not spend time jockeying for power at the beginning, saving precious time.
• Business students spend most of the time planning rather than executing (with the problem