Innovation through the eyes of a child
October 22nd, 2006 by binnur
As I gave my 8-year-old son his LEGO © shopping catalog, he immediately started happily singing and flipping pages. Shortly after, the predictable “I want thats” interrupted his singing. As a family-owned enterprise for generations, LEGO products has been providing a fun, creative and safe play environment to children of all ages. As a parent, I certainly appreciate the quietness around the house during play time with LEGO blocks, when compared to more modern, “electrified” entertainment.
The LEGO Group created a culture around its products that enables their followers to design, to build and at times to destroy, almost anything that their imagination desires. As my son said, “a world without LEGOs would be a very boring place”. LEGO’s contribution to creativity is frequently acknowledged through numerous product excellence awards.
Here are the key innovative elements that contribute to LEGO’s enduring success:
- Strong sense of purpose: LEGO’s strong sense of purpose carries itself into everything they do, and clearly demonstrates itself in their brand. LEGO is an abbreviation of two Danish words “leg godt”, meaning “play well”. For them their brand is a guarantee of quality and originality; it is their promise to parents for providing a creative, imaginative, safe and fun environment for our children. These values and strong purpose drives LEGO Group to continuously look for the next innovative product line.
- Leading with their strength and partnering everywhere else: Based on their 2006 annual report and their vision for the future directions, LEGO Group is refocusing on their core business: toy production. With this decision, in 2005 they sold LEGOLAND Parks to Merlin Entertainments, while maintaining 30% of the shares. This has enabled the LEGO brand to continue while directing all management resources to focus on the stability and profitability of the company. LEGO Group is currently the world’s sixth-largest toy manufacturer.
- Strong community presence: LEGO has recognized the importance of close connection with their users. LEGO Club and LEGO BrickMaster are all part of the LEGO community for children. They also established a LEGO Ambassadors community program for the adult LEGO hobbyists to share their LEGO product knowledge and expertise with the world-wide LEGO community. We also cannot forget the LUGNET (LEGO Users Group Network), or the various activities that they pull together, such as BrickCon.
- Collaborative innovation: LEGO recognizes the need to be close to their users, and company is utilizing many venues to strengthen its ties between its customers and the company. LEGO Factory and LEGO Digital Designer provide their users with the ability to create their own designs for manufacturing, or just simply sharing with the world using the digital gallery. LEGO Inside Tour is a way for the designers, product developers and the users to get together.
- Extensive set of products and services for ages 0-99+ build on their core products and purpose: Here is some of the sampling of their products: LEGO Magazine, LEGO Factory, LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT, LEGO Education, LEGO Parents, various licensed products to add their creativity boost to role playing (StarWars, Harry Potter), … The list goes on.
- Ecosystem of partners and supporting products/services: LEGO products has enabled other products and services to exists within its ecosystem. These include partnership with various institutions/companies that are experts in relevant topics. Some examples include LEGO engineering (legoengineering.com), First LEGO league International, and LEGO Serious Play. We can’t forget the various LEGO brick storage and organization products that exists specifically for LEGO blocks storage as well, such as the BOX4BLOX.
At the end, for my son what matters most is that his purpose of having a fun play time, where he can showcase and share his latest creations and ideas with others, is well met with LEGO products. In summary, LEGO Group through their innovative products have enabled my son to create and be innovative himself.
There is no doubt that the toy industry is competitive. However, if LEGO Group continues to play to its strengths and extend its collaboration with their users and their partners, they will continue to deliver some of the most innovative and well regarded products for many generations to come.
[...] You might have seen my blog on Lego previously. As I mentioned before, Lego is now focusing on their core business. Part of these efforts also include moving their production and distribution centers to countries with lower wages. Unfortunately, their operationalization of these plans are not well executed with the Christmas in mind, and it looks like these structural changes are impacting their ability to deliver on their key products. The spokesperson indicated that their most popular products are impacted and they are not able to fulfill the demand. If you were planning on getting some Lego’s this Christmas, mainly Duplo bricks, boxes with Lego City, Star Wars and Lego Technik sets, you should start your shopping now. [...]