Sparkathlon
The team takes on creative challenges with very little time.
What it looks like
A video says in thirty seconds what a page explains in a thousand words: how loud a room gets, how teams move when there are two minutes left, what happens when the leaderboard updates.
What it is
Teams get creative challenges through an app, one after another, each with its own clock. You invent, you build, you submit. The score updates in real time on a leaderboard everyone can see, right up to the last challenge.
When it makes sense to choose it
It works well when you have a kick-off or a conference and you need something that lifts the energy without asking for physical effort. It’s all mental, creative and timed, and it happens indoors, so the weather isn’t a factor and nobody has to change.
It works less well if you’re after a reflective or low-competition moment. The live leaderboard keeps everyone sharp, and that’s the point of it.
How it actually works
The group splits into teams, each with its own device. The app releases the challenges one at a time, with a time limit that isn’t up for negotiation. A full Sparkathlon runs between an hour and an hour and a half.
The challenges alternate between four kinds. There’s pitching an idea in a few seconds and making it convincing. There’s building something with your hands, a model or a sketch, inside the time you’re given. There’s explaining something to people who can’t see it, under constraints that make communicating harder. And there’s solving a problem with only the resources on your table.
To give you an idea: one challenge asks for a thirty-second advert for an unlikely product, aimed at an audience that isn’t its own, and gives you a quarter of an hour to shoot it and submit it.
The leaderboard changes after every submission, and that changes the way people play. Teams behind take risks, teams ahead go stiff. It’s the part that resembles real work most closely.
Three questions
Does it need preparation?
No. The challenges are revealed on the spot, and it’s built that way on purpose: nobody can arrive prepared, so nobody starts with an advantage.
Does it suit large groups?
Yes. The number of teams adapts to the group, and the challenges are tuned to the objectives and the size.
Does it need special equipment?
No, it needs the app and the materials, which we bring. A room with space in it and some tables is enough. It runs indoors, but if you have an outdoor space the activity will happily use it.
When what surfaces deserves an afterwards
An activity surfaces a great deal about how a team communicates, decides and works together, and sometimes what surfaces deserves more time, more depth and a method. That is where a Team Coaching path can begin: a different road, to be taken only if it is needed, to turn what the day made visible into a new way of working together.
Discover Team Coaching →
Let’s talk about your next team building
You don’t need to have picked a format yet. Tell us what you want your team to take home, how many of you there are and where you’ll be, and we’ll do the rest: within 24 hours you get a considered proposal for your case, with the formats that hold up against your numbers, and what each one leaves the team the day after.
Prefer to talk? +971 50 795 9666 · info @ teambuildingincentive.ae