What is Torchbox Labs?

Lock them in a room for 2 and half days and what do you get? An inspiring and innovative website of course. Well, that's the plan anyway.

Every month or so we run Torchbox Labs. An apprentice-style office game designed to build team spirit, test project management and ultimately see what we can make under pressure.

The challenge is based on the 20% projects offered by Google to their engineers, where they are free to spend a fifth of their normal work time on new and exciting ideas that have potential. It also draws on Amazon's 'two pizza' team rule: "If a project team can eat more than two pizzas, it's too large." Amazon's CTO, Verner Vogels, maintains that "small teams are fast...and don't get bogged down in so-called administrivia".

The day before the challenge starts the multidisciplinary team of four are presented with a number of potential ideas. Their first task is to select the project that they are going to take on. The brief is well, brief, and includes very few, yet very clear, requirements;

• 2.5 working days max
• Must include a marketing plan
• Re-using rather than re-inventing
• Define success at the outset
• Oh, and it must be completed on time

So far we have had two teams locked in the lab. First up were Darwin, Matthew, Nick L and Vic who took on lightsoffnow.com. They built a site that enables people to pester companies to turn out their lights overnight. People can shame companies by photographing the buildings at night with their lights on and texting the image to the site where is it displayed for all to see.

Second up were Ed, Neal and the two Bens who chose to 'Let the people decide'. Lo and behold, mobjudge.com became the place to settle arguments once and for all. People can create an argument, set when they want it resolved by and then ask their friends to pick a side.

Each challenge culminates in a presentation to the panel - i.e. the rest of the team at Torchbox - justifying design decisions and technology selection, and setting out their strategies for launch and ongoing marketing.

Sure, mistakes get made and it's exhausting working in such a tight timeframe, but the Labs experience is a really positive and motivational one; encouraging creativity and ingenuity alongside focus and control.