The 10 Uses Challenge
Time for the team building activity: 10–15 minutes
Setup effort: Very easy (choose one object)
Estimated cost: Free
Business value: Stimulates creative thinking, breaks mental rigidity, and strengthens ideation skills in team building sessions
What is The 10 Uses Challenge?
The 10 Uses Challenge is a classic creative thinking team building activity where participants must generate ten different uses for a simple everyday object.
Common objects include:
a paperclip
a brick
a coffee mug
a rubber band
a cardboard box
The exercise forces participants to move beyond the obvious and stretch their imagination.
It is widely used in innovation training and brainstorming warm-ups because it quickly unlocks divergent thinking.
How do you run The 10 Uses Challenge?
Choose one everyday object and announce it to the group.
For example:
“Your challenge: find 10 different uses for a paperclip.”
Participants can work individually or in small groups of 3–4 people.
Give teams 5–7 minutes to generate as many ideas as possible.
Encourage participants to think broadly — ideas do not have to be realistic.
After time is up, ask groups to share their most creative or surprising uses.
Optionally, count how many ideas each team produced.
The full team building activity typically runs 10–15 minutes.
Why it’s great for a team
Many teams approach problems with fixed mental patterns.
The 10 Uses Challenge trains divergent thinking, which is essential for innovation.
In one short team building activity, it helps teams:
increase idea fluency
challenge functional fixedness
encourage playful creativity
build collaborative brainstorming habits
generate high creative energy
Participants usually notice that the first few ideas come easily, but the most interesting ones appear only after pushing past the obvious.
This insight directly applies to real business ideation.
It is particularly effective:
before brainstorming sessions
in innovation workshops
with product and marketing teams
during offsites
Research in creativity psychology consistently shows that idea quantity is strongly correlated with idea quality.
Teams that practice rapid ideation exercises often improve the originality of their solutions.
How to organize it effectively
Object selection is the main success factor.
Choose objects that are:
familiar
simple
not too specialized
Avoid items with obvious limited uses.
As facilitator, emphasize quantity first, realism later.
Use a visible timer to create urgency.
Encourage participants to build on each other’s ideas if working in groups.
For large teams, run parallel groups and compare idea counts.
In remote team building sessions, shared boards or chat brainstorming work very well.
End with a quick reflection:
“Which ideas surprised you?”
“When did the hardest thinking start?”
“How can we apply this approach at work?”
When well facilitated, The 10 Uses Challenge is a fast, powerful team building activity that unlocks creativity and helps teams move beyond habitual thinking.