inventing the future of play -together with the builders of tomorrow


Inventing the future of play-together with the builders of tomorrow

Building Open Innovation Capabilities and Toolbox at The LEGO Group

A story told backwards…


Presentation overviewBuilding a reputation of openness

The Mindstorms NXT caseLEGO CuusooLEGO Architecture

Building knowledge about Open InnovationInfluential quotesFour value poolsImplementation plan

Building Open Innovation toolboxthrough pilot projects

In the production areaOn the core LEGO ExperienceOn HR processesOn an Open Innovation platform


Alpha Rex

Spike

Tribot

LEGO MINDSTORMS 2nd Gen, co-created with lead users

RoboArm T-56


LEGO Cuusoo, a crowdsourcing platform for new product ideas


Minecraft2 days

Road to 10.000 votes

An engaged community!


Crowdsourcing innovative packaging solutions


A reputation of being open was built…


From isolated to orchestrated efforts

Taskforce established with the aim of:

-assessing the opportunities, needs, and benefits for introducing new practices of OI across The LEGO Group

-defining what next practice would look like building on internal practice as well as insight from the best OI practitioners in the world

-making a firm and evidence based recommendation on what and where the value could be, how this could be delivered and what would be needed to achieve this.

-setting out a viable roadmap – based on how we should move forward, balancing risk and rewards etc.


Our Approach

Learning from Others - 12 interviews with leading OI companies.

Learning from The LEGO Group - input from over

30 practitioners including 10 interviews

Learning by Doing - 4 micro pilots to test capabilities, culture and appetite


External as well as internal contributors have willingly shared their experiences and ideas…

“99.99% of the smartest people in the world don’t work for us.” P&G

“People don’t have to work for us to work with us.” Internal Quote

“All our radical innovations come from people who are not domain experts.”

Orange Telecom

“Until you open up, you do not know what is possible.” McLaren

“I am scared to look at external ideas because we don’t want to get sued.”Internal Quote

“The problem with an innovation culture is that for most of the time and for most of the people you don’t really want one!”

David Robertson, IMD

“Consumers of today are intelligent, they are creative and they have an opinion… And they expect you to listen!”

Internal Quote

However they probably grew up playing with LEGO bricks


We have identified 4 Value Pools to be leveraged…


Diverse internal input

Companies &

Institution

s

Kids &

FansInternal Experts and their

teams

• Systematically ensuring greater diversity in our innovation efforts by seeking and applying input from the four value pools.

• This will provide richer and more innovative solutions with optimal contributions from the entire value chain

• There is overwhelming evidence that adopting T-shaped OI can trigger breakthrough solutions, as well as powerfully enrich the culture

• This is the single biggest change to TLG culture and practices we propose

To fully exploit the potential we need to apply a T-shaped model for OI…


CM

Critical

Tasks

Organisatio

n

Culture

People

The four steps towards OI across “Tasks”, “People”, “Culture” and “Organization”…

Reinforce Collaboration

Celebrate & Share

Build Capabilities

OI Sr. Director + 1FTE

Run 4 Pilot projects tapping into one or more Value Pools

Flagship OI Program, leveraging all four Value Pools within one project e.g. next

Big Bang Play Theme

Practitioner OI Network based on selected pilots

Build Initial ToolkitIP, IT, Process, Incentives Build Full System Capability

Set KPI’s & Metrics

Leading OI(Capability Training)

Competency Framework

Open LEGO Ecosystem

OI Becomes

Signature

Review & Refine ToolkitIP, IT, Process, Incentives

Scope & Define

Business CaseApproval

Strategic Recommendation Review ReviewR R R R

Expansion of OI Network

R R

Lead & Enable

2011

Develop the LEGO Way of OI

2012

Build & Deploy

2013/14

Scale & Leverage

2015+


Current pilot projects:

"People are much more likely to act their way into a new way of

thinking, than think their way into a new way of acting."

Richard Pascale

Therefore we run pilot projects - in our production area (solving hard, “unsolvable” problems) - on improving the core LEGO experience through crowdsourcing - on how to improve core HR processes - on an Open Innovation platform


What we want to achieve:

Going from:Towards:

Creativity from the few Systematic creativity from the many

Select strengths put to play Full potential realized

Succeeding together Succeeding more together with more

people

A relatively closed culture A culture of openness


Thank you for your time!

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inventing the future of play -together with the builders of tomorrow

Documents

lego group page

lego group input

lego bricks

internal quote

open innovation platform

open innovation capabilities

internal practice

innovation culture