The LEGO Innovation Model

Innovation is one of those topics rife with debate and often what is innovation to one person is business-as- usual for the next. Communicating an innovation is often half the job of getting it on the shelf and innovators and designers alike, regardless of where they work, often have to be relentlesss lobbyists and use sophisticated tools of persuasion to further their concepts such as fancy presentations, multi-media, eye-popping visuals - you name it, these are the tools of the designer witch-craft. Needless to say, invariably the more skilled you are in all this, the more sought-after you are as a designer.

What we did at LEGO revamping our innovation process flew in the face of a lot of this. We recognised that some of this 'witch-craft' was getting in the way of making solid business decisions. Concepts were bought into, not because they had a solid business case behind them, but because people developed emotional attachments to them or saw it as their ticket to career advancement to push something through, regardless of the cost. To be fair, this happens all over the place, not just LEGO, but the difference is we chose to do something about it. Arguably some of this, along with the very hard work of the entire organisation in many different areas goes some way to explaining our remarkable turnaround from the doldrums in 2003 where our survival as a company was at stake. Last year, we posted our best results ever in the company's entire 75 year history. Perhaps just a little bit of that remarkable turnaround was down to this.

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/About-Design/managingdesign/Design-at-LEGO/

The link above leads you to the full case study published at the Design Council site and it makes not only for some very good reading, but also is a timely reminder of the value a common tool can have in bringing different disciplines together working on innovation that combines design and business thinking instead of encouraging a war between the two. Having a shared language is tantamount to bringing people together and this model in particular has helped us have some hard-hitting, but objective debates about the merits of concepts and collectively understand how to improve them. Only by creating a shared foundation can you have any hope in trying to solve a problem together.

Comments

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To be fair, this happens all over the place, not just LEGO, but the difference is we chose to do something about it. Arguably some of this, along with the very hard work of the entire organisation in many different areas goes some way to explaining our remarkable turnaround from the doldrums in 2003 where our survival as a company was at stake

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[Jean]

Well I agree with you that concepts are being brought into for personal gain all over the place..but the thing is if higher management doesn't clean such things up..it leads to bad business..meaning losses...and in the very long run maybe even financial instability...believe me I've seen it happen in a firm I worked some 5 years ago...people did what they wanted with the purpose of self promotion..the management didn't care and in the end the firm bancrupted...

[Melissa]

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