The Innovation Tournament
Time for the team building activity: 25–30 minutes
Setup effort: Moderate (prepare challenge prompts and voting system)
Estimated cost: Free
Business value: Encourages competitive creativity, strengthens idea development, and energizes collaborative innovation in team building sessions
What is The Innovation Tournament?
The Innovation Tournament is a competitive team building activity where teams generate creative ideas and compete through several rounds until one concept wins.
The format is inspired by startup pitch competitions and innovation challenges.
Teams must:
Generate an idea
Present it quickly
Improve it based on feedback
Compete in successive rounds
The tournament structure adds excitement and momentum to the ideation process.
How do you run The Innovation Tournament?
Divide participants into teams of 3–5 people.
Present a challenge relevant to the group. For example:
“Invent a new service that dramatically improves remote collaboration.”
Run the activity in three rounds.
Round 1 — Idea Creation (8–10 minutes)
Teams generate a concept and prepare a short pitch.
Round 2 — First Pitch Round (8–10 minutes)
Each team presents their idea in about 60–90 seconds.
After hearing all ideas, participants vote for the most promising ones.
Round 3 — Final Pitch (5–7 minutes)
The top teams refine their idea and present again.
The group votes to determine the winner.
The full team building activity typically runs 25–30 minutes.
Why it’s great for a team
Many team building activities generate ideas but lack momentum or excitement.
The Innovation Tournament adds a competitive structure that energizes creativity.
In one short exercise, it helps teams:
generate innovative ideas quickly
improve collaborative ideation
practice persuasive communication
encourage constructive competition
build high energy and engagement
Participants often push ideas further because they want their concept to advance in the tournament.
It is particularly effective:
during innovation workshops
at company offsites
in product or marketing teams
before strategic brainstorming sessions
From a creativity standpoint, friendly competition often increases effort and idea quality.
How to organize it effectively
Challenge selection is the most important success factor.
Choose a problem that is:
open-ended
relevant to the group
interesting enough to spark imagination
Ensure that time limits are clear and strictly enforced.
As facilitator, keep the tournament pace fast to maintain excitement.
For larger groups, you can run multiple brackets before the final round.
In remote team building sessions, polling tools work well for voting.
End with a quick reflection:
“What made the winning idea stand out?”
“Which ideas surprised the group?”
When well facilitated, The Innovation Tournament is a dynamic team building activity that combines creativity, collaboration, and friendly competition to produce memorable and engaging sessions.