This article does a good job of outlining how Lego struggled with the notion of opening up its innovation model and listening to its adult customers. Similar to Microsoft and hackers of the Kinect, Lego had to decide, "Do we sue them or embrace it," when faced with hackers of their Mindstorms products. Ultimately Lego embraced user innovation and saved their company. This article also discusses how adults have left high paying jobs to become "Lego Ambassadors" or Lego artists and make their own designs.
This article relates to our class because it talks about LEGO, and the challenges the company created by changing strategies throughout the years. One point in the article describes how Lego let its designers and customers "run free" with designs, only to find that these new designs required additional capital in new parts and were far from "kid friendly". LEGO needed to realize its customer and strategy, and has managed to revive its brand by doing so.
I was watching TV before and came across this commercial for LEGO build together. It got me thinking about our LEGO exercise, and how many of us did not think that it was such a good idea. Some said they did not see fathers and sons being able to work together on the computer program, and some said that they could not see kids buying their creations online and rebuilding them. This new ad campaign (called Build Together), shows a father and son working on a LEGO project. I think that this was put into place as a way to reinforce the idea of a father building with his son, or a son building with his father. It seems to me that LEGO was well-aware of the difficulties we were raising as a class, and as a result, but these commercials into place.
