10 offbeat ideas to spark creativity and promote collaboration

Workplace independence is a beautiful thing, but isolation can be stifling.

That’s why I seldom work alone. I crave creative collaboration. Teamwork. Banter. Conversation.

Creative collaboration is my No. 1 source of professional joy, but it’s also strategic. Aside from making work more fun, creative collaboration is a tremendous way to unlock new ideas, solve problems, engage employees and fire up productivity.

If you’d like to move your team toward more fruitful collaboration, start by taking some playful chances at work. Here are 10 fun challenges to spark your crowd’s creativity—whether you’re a team of two, 12, 20 or 200:

1. Accumulate an unbroken chain. Many factories track and celebrate days without a safety incident. What action or achievement can everyone on your team sustain, day after day? Days when you learn something new? Days when everyone arrives—and leaves—on time? Days without swearing at each other?