Two people and one organization were honored at Thursday’s 128th Chamber Annual Banquet Awards.

The 2026 Community Impact Award was given to Tom Apgar. He and his family were recognized for the new Apgar Family Water Plaza and contributions on the Linn Creek District projects. The Community Impact award is intended to recognize a person or group of people for changing the landscape of Marshalltown.

Also receiving an award was Pete Drury, who was named the 2026 Rising Leader, which honors someone who is dedicated to making Marshalltown a better place to live.

The third award given was the 2026 Tourism Champion to the Marshalltown YMCA-YWCA for promoting Marshalltown as a destination for visitors.

Before the awards were given, keynote speaker Andrew Davis told the attendees gathered at Midnight Gardens about the Cube of Creativity, a concept to help people and businesses overcome constraints and plans from failing.

“Maybe it is not the plan at all, but the unlimited possibilities we started with,” Davis said. “Maybe in the beginning it was all these grand ideas we had and we said, ‘Hey, everybody, give me an idea. Think outside the box. Tell me what you got. Let’s brainstorm.’ Maybe that unlimited number of possibilities is what’s causing our plans to go awry.”

The concept came to him during the COVID-19 pandemic when he saw four children in his neighborhood ride a mattress on wheels down the road. Before COVID, no one had to be creative, Davis said. The pandemic created constraints on creativity as people could not do what they normally would.

“Constraints breed creativity,” he said. “Within the next year, I started to realize maybe the pandemic wasn’t something we had to deal with, but maybe something interesting could come out of it.”

Davis talked about Sweet Farm, a California nonprofit dedicated to educating people on where food comes from, tours, rescued agriculture animals and event space. As the pandemic was ongoing, business was severely struggling, so the owner requested everyone to come up with ideas on how to generate revenue within a very short period of time, otherwise it might have to find new homes for the animals. An idea was thrown out that since many people in the world were having Zoom meetings, Sweet Farm could offer one of their goats to crash the meeting or make a cameo appearance. Thus, Goat 2 Meeting was born and since then more than 375,000 people around the world have come face-to-face, per se, with a farm animal, and Sweet Farm has generated more than $1 million.

He said Sweet Farm used the same concepts as the Cube of Creativity.

The four sides of the cube are:

Eliminate the unnecessary. Davis said too many people hang onto things that should have been stopped a long time ago.

“Our creative fuel is finite,” he said. “You don’t have a full tank of creative fuel all the time. You need to make sure you are using it wisely. You need to elimite the unnecessary so you can unleash your resources on the stuff that matters, and that’s the key. Every time you want to pitch or start something new, start thinking to yourself about what you’re going to stop doing in order to pursue that new initiative;”

Define the outcome. The outcome of what to expect needs to be clear and it should be a single result, Davis said. Too many times, there are too many outcomes, but if everyone is focused on one outcome, they are clear on what defines success;

Limit the options. Sweet Farm limited the options by announcing the need for ideas at 3 p.m., and telling staff ideas need to be brought forward by the following morning. Davis said the key to limiting the options is asking what unreasonable limitations can be applied.

“When we give people reasonable time limitations, they can go off and do a million things,” he said. “Then four hours later, you’ve done zero things. When you give them an unreasonable time limitation, it takes away all the other stuff and boils it down to just the things that need to get done to move forward,”

Raise the stakes. Davis said whenever something new is pursued, people need to ask what specifically will happen if success is not realized.

“Our most creative work does not happen during business as usual,” Davis said. “The Cube of Creativity is designed to take the things that make the sense of urgency work and put them into context of everyday business. Original ideas require focused attention, working toward a clear outcome to overcome our unique challenges, especially when the stakes are high. When you can do all four sides, it works.”

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.