Just say Yes, And

Trading Paper Clips to…Whatever You Can Get

One of the most fun and invigorating exercises I do in my course at Harvard is to give assigned groups of students a paper clip.  They can make as many trades as they can, to “maximize value,” whatever that means to them. 

They have the weekend to trade away.  They come back to class to report on what they did, what they got, and what they learned.

This exercise was made internet famous In 2005 when  a guy who spent a year doing this, (and told his story on TikTok).  There’s a famous guy on TikTok who spent a year doing this.  He was able to get a house, worth $70,000.  So it’s very possible to create a ton of value.

My students came back with a range of things, the most impressive of which was a voucher for a free night at a Harvard Sq hotel (over $200 value), and a Harvard blanket they were able to auction to interested parties for $300! Pic below.    

While they came back with hundreds of dollars in value, they also lost a lot of other types of value, value that you can’t quantify.  Several groups had a lot of inter-group conflict.  A couple of groups couldn’t decide on a strategy to start.  Instead of getting together, they made trades on their own and “handed off” any trade acquisitions to the next person.

Trading up for material goods is technically the goal of the exercise.  But it’s not the only goal.  I could have given them each a paper clip and told them to go make trades like the TikTok guy did.  I could have also given them a longer time frame, also like the Tik Tok guy had.  But I deliberately put them in groups, to see how they worked together on this team project.  

I explained to them after they reported back that how the team worked together was the real negotiation.  I didn’t really care what they were able to acquire.  Their own group discussion of value and who cares about what, understanding where there was opportunity, and what was their collective definition of value was the real goal. 

The mantra in this class is One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure.  What you consider valuable – or not (trash) is not necessarily what someone else values (treasure).  This is why thrift store shopping and garage sales can be so much fun.  

They say “2 Heads are Better Than 1” when it comes to problem solving.  If this isn’t true, wouldn’t we all be off in our ivory towers doing the things we need to do?  In the age of AI this is becoming our new reality.  Sure you can get AI to do the work for you… and sure the cute paper clip image in my slide was AI generated…but is that the best you can do?  (Doubtful!)

And is it any fun?  (Probably not!). 

Humans are social creatures.  Barbra Streisand said it best: people who need people (and we all do)  are the luckiest people in the world!  And who knows, maybe you too can get a free house.

Here are the paper clip trades the Tik Tok guy did to get his house

Me signing the Blanket for auction and then the class with the paper clip outcome