You’re given 20 sticks of spaghetti, a meter of tape, a meter of string, and one marshmallow. Your mission? Build the tallest free-standing tower possible—with the marshmallow sitting proudly on top. Sounds simple, right? Well, it turns out that this deceptively easy challenge has frustrated business executives, baffled engineers, and even humbled some of the world’s most strategic thinkers.
This is the Marshmallow Challenge, a creative problem-solving exercise introduced by Tom Wujec in his TED Talk Build a Tower, Build a Team. The challenge isn’t just a game—it’s a brilliant experiment in teamwork, risk management, and innovation. More importantly, The Marshmallow Challenge is often used to illustrate design thinking mindsets, such as prototyping. In real-world projects—building a product, launching a startup, or developing a new strategy—having a great idea isn’t enough. Success comes from building, testing, and iterating. Like in the challenge, teams that proactively experiment, adjust, and improve their designs have the highest chance of success.
So, how does this challenge work? And what can we learn from it? Let’s dive in.
What is the Marshmallow Challenge?
The Marshmallow Challenge is a simple yet powerful exercise designed to test how people collaborate, build, and problem-solve under time constraints. It has been conducted in classrooms, boardrooms, and innovation labs worldwide—and the results are both surprising and eye-opening.
At first glance, the challenge seems simple: build the tallest possible free-standing structure using only spaghetti, tape, string, and a marshmallow. However, once participants begin, they quickly discover the real difficulty—structural integrity, weight distribution, and time management all come into play.
The Rules: How the Challenge Works
The Rules: How the Challenge Works
The tower must stand on its own when time runs out. If any team tries to hold it up, they are disqualified. Sounds easy? It’s not. Most teams fail when they underestimate the weight of the marshmallow, assuming it’s light enough to sit on top without affecting the structure. However, when placed at the top, the marshmallow often causes the tower to collapse—especially if the team only adds it at the last second. This challenge simulates real-world project management and innovation by demonstrating how assumptions, poor planning, and a lack of testing can lead to failure.
Who wins the Marshmallow Challenge?
At its core, winning the Marshmallow Challenge is all about constructing the tallest free-standing structure that can support a whole marshmallow on top—without any last-minute crutches. The winning team is not simply the one with the most beautiful plan or the most elaborate design, but the one that manages to build a stable, innovative structure that meets all the rules by the time the 18-minute countdown ends.
Surprisingly, it’s often the kindergarteners who come out on top. While many adults—such as business professionals, engineers, or college students—tend to overcomplicate the process, children demonstrate a simple yet profound approach to problem-solving. Kindergarteners instinctively start by placing the marshmallow on top of a simple structure and then iterate quickly. They build, test, and adjust without getting bogged down by lengthy planning sessions.
These young innovators aren’t afraid of making mistakes. Their willingness to experiment repeatedly allows them to quickly learn what works and what doesn’t, making them far more adaptable as the challenge progresses.
In contrast, adults often spend too much time planning and debating strategies, creating elaborate blueprints that leave little room for flexibility. This overplanning means that by the time the marshmallow is carefully added at the end, there’s no opportunity to test and refine the design—leading to structural failures when the unexpected weight of the marshmallow causes the tower to collapse. Many adult teams only place the marshmallow on top at the very last minute, assuming its weight is negligible. This delay prevents them from understanding the true impact of the marshmallow on their structure, often resulting in a collapse.
A lot of time is spent in the ideation phase—sketching “perfect” designs and dividing roles—rather than jumping into hands-on experimentation. This heavy focus on planning leaves little room for iterative testing, crucial for identifying and fixing structural weaknesses.
Additionally, in many adult teams, hierarchical dynamics and rigid roles slow down the process. The reluctance to deviate from a pre-determined plan stifles creativity and rapid problem-solving, essential elements needed to overcome the challenge’s constraints.
The Winning Mindset
Ultimately, the teams that succeed in the Marshmallow Challenge embrace the spirit of prototyping. They understand that the marshmallow isn’t just an afterthought; it’s a crucial element that must be incorporated from the beginning. By integrating the marshmallow into the design early on and continuously testing their structure, these teams learn quickly from their failures and iterate toward a robust solution.
Broader Lessons in Innovation and Design Thinking
The Marshmallow Challenge is more than just a fun activity—it’s a powerful metaphor for real-world innovation, project management, and problem-solving. The lessons learned from this simple experiment apply directly to business, product development, startups, engineering, and leadership.
1. Every Project Has a “Marshmallow”
In the challenge, teams assume the marshmallow is light and won’t affect the structure. But when they place it on top at the last minute, the entire structure often collapses under its weight. This reflects a common mistake in the real world—making assumptions without testing them early.
For example: A company launches a new product without testing the market’s response. After months of development, they realize there’s no demand. The product fails, just like a collapsing spaghetti tower.
2. Prototyping and Testing Are Essential
One of the biggest reasons kindergarteners outperform adults in this challenge is their willingness to experiment and iterate. Instead of overplanning, they build small structures, test them, and continuously improve. Tech companies like Apple, Tesla, and SpaceX follow rapid prototyping. Instead of waiting years to perfect a product, they build, test, and release multiple versions—learning from each iteration.
3. Design is a “Contact Sport”
Innovation isn’t about sitting in meetings and making perfect plans—it’s about getting hands-on, testing ideas, and making adjustments in real time. For example, the Wright brothers didn’t build a single airplane based on blueprints. They tested multiple prototypes, learning from each failure until they created the first working aircraft.
4. Collaboration and Communication Matter
The challenge also highlights the importance of effective teamwork. Teams that communicate well, adapt quickly, and share ideas tend to build better structures. You can read our article, ‘The advantages of teamwork in graphic design’.
5. High Stakes Can Lead to Poor Performance
When Tom Wujec ran the Marshmallow Challenge with a $10,000 prize, every team failed. The pressure increased stress, fear of failure, and overthinking, leading to worse results. Like startups that raise too much funding too early often collapse because the pressure to deliver a perfect product prevents experimentation and learning. For example, Google encourages employees to take risks and fail fast—this fosters creativity and continuous improvement instead of fear of failure.
Learning Prototyping with the Marshmallow Challenge
In real-world applications, the same principles apply. Whether you’re launching a new product, designing a website, or creating a business strategy, the most effective way to succeed is by building small, testing early, and iterating often. Instead of spending too much time perfecting an idea on paper, start with a minimum viable product (MVP), gather feedback, and refine based on real-world results. If you want to improve your prototyping skills, the Marshmallow Challenge is an excellent hands-on lesson.
Conclusion: Turning “Uh-oh” into “Ta-da!”
At first glance, the Marshmallow Challenge seems like a simple game. But in reality, it’s a powerful lesson in innovation, teamwork, and problem-solving. Success in this challenge—and in real projects—doesn’t come from having the perfect plan. It comes from testing, adapting, and improving.
This mindset is at the heart of innovation and design thinking. In product development, business strategy, and creative problem-solving, waiting too long to test an idea can lead to major setbacks when assumptions are wrong—just like teams who place the marshmallow on top at the last second, only to watch their structure collapse. The Marshmallow Challenge reinforces the importance of rapid prototyping, where ideas are continuously tested and improved based on real-world feedback.
So, before you take on your next big challenge, ask yourself:
Visit MarshmallowChallenge.com and put your problem-solving skills to the test!
