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Title details for Brick by Brick by David Robertson - Available

Brick by Brick

How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry

by David Robertson
Bill Breen
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
2 of 2 copies available
Sometimes radical yet always applicable, Brick by Brick abounds with real-world lessons for unleashing breakthrough innovation in your organization, using LEGO—which experienced one of the most remarkable business transformations in recent history—as a business model.
As LEGO failed to keep pace with the revolutionary changes in kids' lives and began sliding into irrelevance, the company's leaders implemented some of the business world's most widely espoused prescriptions for boosting innovation. Ironically, these changes pushed the iconic toymaker to the brink of bankruptcy, showing that what works in theory can fail spectacularly in the brutally competitive global economy.
It took a new LEGO management team—faced with the growing rage for electronic toys, few barriers to entry, and ultra-demanding consumers (ten-year old boys)—to reinvent the innovation rule book and transform LEGO into one of the world's most profitable, fastest-growing companies. 
Along the way, Brick by Brick reveals how LEGO:
- Became truly customer-driven by co-creating with kids as well as its passionate adult fans
- Looked beyond products and learned to leverage a full-spectrum approach to innovation
- Opened its innovation process by using both the "wisdom of crowds" and the expertise of elite cliques
- Discovered uncontested, "blue ocean" markets, even as it thrived in brutally competitive red oceans
- Gave its world-class design teams enough space to create and direction to deliver built a culture where profitable innovation flourishes
Whether you're a senior executive looking to make your company grow, an entrepreneur building a startup from scratch, or a fan who wants to instill some of that LEGO magic in your career, you'll learn how to build your own innovation advantage, brick by brick.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 25, 2013

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780449806531
      • File size: 299438 KB
      • Duration: 10:23:49

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 29, 2013
      LEGO’s iconic building system is a favorite of children and parents worldwide. Wharton professor Robertson’s entertaining, informative, and fast-paced account of LEGO’s rise, fall, and subsequent victory in the marketplace will have readers rooting for the survival of the little brick. Writing with former Fast Company senior editor Breen (The Responsibility Revolution), Robertson recounts how in 1932, founder Ole Kirk Christiansen, a Danish master carpenter and toymaker, spent more than a decade perfecting the plastic brick; how his son Godtfred “bet on the brick” in the mid-1950s and developed play systems that propelled the company’s expansion through the next several decades; and how grandson Kjeld drove global growth from the 1970s to the early 2000s. The majority of the book examines the company’s precarious health over the last decade. A turnaround operator’s attempted innovation backfires and leaves the company’s balance sheet bleeding beyond repair. In the end, a new CFO and CEO take draconian measures to repair the company, focusing on “profitable innovation”—rather than innovation for innovation’s sake—and listening to the customer. This book will be a valuable read for any business leader or student, but will also delight those familiar with the beloved toy. 37 b&w photos, 8-page insert. Agent: Carol Franco, Kneerim, Williams & Bloom.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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