Ideas Marketplace

Choose this exercise

Purpose: Prioritize project proposals through transparent, distributed peer resource allocation.

Use it when: Use during project planning, community budgeting, or strategic goal setting when a group must narrow down multiple competing concepts into a funded shortlist.

Skip it when: Skip when decisions are strictly executive-mandated, when ideas cannot be compared under a common scope, or when participants have not yet developed concrete project options.

Group arrangement: Pairs or trios staff up to 8 stalls, rotating so all members both pitch and browse as buyers.

Timing: Source suggests 60 to 120 minutes. Set here to a focused 60-minute session for up to 24 participants.

Materials and tools

• 8 poster boards or large flip chart sheets
• 8 collection envelopes or cups labeled with stall numbers
• Broad-tip markers (1 pack per stall)
• Pre-counted paper tokens or poker chips (5 tokens per participant)
• Painter tape to mount posters

Before participants arrive

1. Place tables or wall spaces around the perimeter to serve as separate stalls.
2. Tape a collection envelope next to each stall station.
3. Count sets of 5 tokens per person and place them at a central distribution point.
4. Ensure proposals or project prompts are identified before the session begins.

Say this to open

Welcome to the Ideas Marketplace. Today we are prioritizing our project proposals using a simulated market budget. Each team will set up a stall with a clear poster explaining their proposal, its benefits, and what it needs to succeed. Every person receives five symbolic tokens to invest. You will take turns staffing your stall and browsing the market to allocate your budget across the proposals you value most. You may split your tokens or invest multiple tokens in one place. At the end, we will count the investment totals and analyze our collective priorities.

How to run it

1. Form stalls and introduce rules 5 minutes

   Divide the room into small teams of 2 to 3 people. Assign each team to a stall station. Distribute the opening script, explain the trading rules, and hand out poster paper and markers to each team.

2. Prepare proposal stalls 15 minutes

   Teams spend 15 minutes drafting a proposal poster at their stall. The poster must list the project name, the core problem it solves, its key benefits, and an estimated resource requirement. For example, a poster might propose a 'Weekly Community Tool Library' explaining the equipment needed, space required, and how many households it serves. Tape the collection envelope beside the poster.

3. Distribute budget tokens 5 minutes

   Distribute exactly 5 tokens to every participant. Explain that stall hosts may not drop their personal tokens into their own stall envelope; tokens must be invested in other stalls. Announce two browsing shifts so every team member has time to shop and pitch.

4. Open marketplace shift one 10 minutes

   One member from each team stays at their stall as the seller. Remaining participants act as buyers, walking from stall to stall, asking questions, and dropping tokens into envelopes for projects they choose to support.

5. Open marketplace shift two 10 minutes

   Team members swap roles. The previous sellers become buyers and circulate with their 5 tokens. The previous buyers return to staff their stalls and pitch to incoming visitors.

6. Tally resources and present results 5 minutes

   Close the market. Stall hosts open their collection envelopes and count total tokens received. The facilitator records the final counts on a central board visible to everyone, listing projects from highest to lowest funded.

7. Reflect on investment patterns 10 minutes

   Lead a brief debrief examining the patterns. Invite 3 or 4 comments on what drove funding decisions, and record which low-funded ideas could be merged into stronger initiatives.

Debrief questions

• Which specific factors led you to invest your tokens in certain stalls over others?
• Looking at the projects with partial funding, which components could be combined or integrated into the top projects?
• What immediate next step is required to turn the top-funded concepts into real action plans?

Finished output: A ranked leaderboard of all proposals showing peer token allocations, with documented consolidation notes for partially funded projects.

Remote

Create breakout rooms for each proposal stall, with each room assigned a dedicated slide in a shared presentation deck. Give each participant 5 digital token icons in a private scratch area. Participants rotate across breakout rooms in two scheduled intervals, pasting their digital tokens onto the project slide of their choice. The facilitator sums token icons at the end on a master slide.

Hybrid

Stalls exist physically in the room and concurrently as slides on a shared digital board. Remote participants join via video and drop digital tokens onto virtual stall cards while an on-site facilitator mirrors those allocations into physical envelopes. On-site presenters pitch simultaneously to in-room attendees and a roving or station camera.

Access and participation choices

• Participants may browse and read posters silently rather than engaging in verbal debate with hosts.
• Anyone may decline to pitch by taking on the role of poster scribe or token counter.
• Participants may pass on investing all their tokens without disclosing their reasons.

If the session gets stuck

A team runs out of time to finish an elaborate poster.

Provide a standard three-line template: Project Name, One-sentence Purpose, Key Outcome. Have them write only those three lines so their stall opens on time.

Participants invest all their tokens in their own project.

Enforce the rule during step 3: self-funding is invalid. If found during tallying, deduct self-invested tokens from the stall total.

Terms used here

• Stall: A designated table, wall space, or digital slide where a single proposal is displayed and pitched.
• Token: A symbolic unit of currency, such as a paper chit or poker chip, representing equal voting or budget weight.