The Innovation Diaries

Tyler Brûlé’s “hipper than thou” culture bible Monocle recently featured an interview with Lego CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, where they discussed innovation and how the company has adapted over the last 10 years. It’s a great piece of stimulus on how a company can become successful again by focusing on their key values - and the nicest thing is that we here at ?What If! helped them get there (check 11:40 into the clip if you don’t believe us!)

Lego realised they had lost their way, so decided to move into becoming an open source company and to be driven by those who love the brand, rather than trying to pander to possible new customers. They immediately stopped producing ranges that were easy to construct, as this took away from “the pride of creativity”, which was one of the values of their core group of evangelists.

They’ve changed their innovation process completely, working with outside companies (including yours truly) to create an effective framework for creative behaviours, allowing for different levels of innovation (incremental, real innovation and radical innovation) across the areas of product, experience and communication. The Lego innovation team, who only recently came into existence, now “live with” various families in their key markets, picking up clues on how children play within their own environment. - or as Jørgen puts it himself “Dramatically changing the way we do innovation, with more structure and external input”.