Rules

Abstract

At the offices of We Beat The Mountain (WBTM) — a start-up company that designs, produces and sells products from recycled materials — we had entered the last stage of our meeting. As WBTM was about to launch its first consumer product, the founder and his core team were assembled for this workshop, which used lusory spaces to brainstorm about aspects of their organization such as the relevant stakeholders and the areas of knowledge that were essential for WBTM. Together with my fellow moderator I had just explained what the objective of the last round was: to write down on the colored cards that were in front of them, different things that WBTM could spend its money on. The winner would be the one who wrote down the most items that others also wrote down. The intention was to have participants think about what they wrote down instead of going for pure volume of ideas (which had been the aim of a previous round). That was how it had been designed. But that was not how it went down. After I had started the timer for the five-minute round, the WBTM founder looked around the table at his core team and said, with a mischievous smile on his face: ‘Is there anyone who wants to win this round?’ No, actually there wasn’t anyone who really wanted to win or at least no one admitted it.