Organization Name: Lego
Industry: Toy Manufacturing
CEO: Jorgen Vig Knudstorp
Web references: LEGO IDEAS, YouTube, Lego , FaceBook, Twitter,
The Lego Group based in Billund, Denmark is owned by the Kirk Kristionsen family and was founded in 1932. Focused on the developing the creativity of children through learning and playing, it is one of the worlds largest manufacturer of play materials, toys for children in over 130 countries.
With revenue of $2.03 billion in the first half of 2015 and a profit of $273 million, Lego was easily on of the Top 10 most innovative companies of 2015 in Advertising and Marketing.
Source: Fast Company
In an interview on the Larry Fedoruk Show,
Larry interviews Amanda Santoro, (@ramanda76) Brand Relations at LEGO Systems, Inc. Amanda talks with Larry about new Simpsons LEGO figures.
Amanda regularly tweets and retweets about LEGO and the brand. Here is one example of one of Amanda’s retweets from the San Fransisco Giants. What an amazing LEGO build!
Smile, Dad! #SFGLego #SFGiants pic.twitter.com/Np8cm2W9Cp
— San Francisco Giants (@SFGiants) September 12, 2015
I am sure that anyone reading this has played and built something cool with Lego at some point in their life but, how many have actually gone to the next level and gotten involved with Mindstorms?
Lego’s crowdsourcing project, mindstorms is a tool kit to create robots using a computer brain called the Brick. In 1988, the “intelligent brick” was created by The Lego Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bringing Lego creation to life. This led to the a global community of users from all ages over the last 15 years. Since 1998, the Lego Mindstorms tool set has become the best-selling product for Lego Group and has sparked the launch of First Lego League. It is a robotics competition for middle school students.
The latest and most current brick is called the EV3 and was launched worldwide in September 2013. It is the control center and power station for the robots.
Using Lego Bricks and color, touch, remote infrared beacon and motors, the creative possibilities are endless. Helping to combine the LEGO building system with technology to create and command robots to walk, talk and do everything that you can imagine. You can control your robots with the remote control or you can download the free app and use your smart device.
Source: LEGO MINDSTORMS
The role of a Mindstorm Community Advocate is to volunteer their time, support LEGO, and help to influence current and future products. Every 2 weeks they meet with the LEGO Community Manager that works for LEGO to discuss plans for more customer engagement.
There are many things that this community is working on to promote the LEGO brand. Customers are responsible for innovations and an amazing example of this comes from a 7th grader, Shubham Banerjee. This young innovator created a braille printer for a school science fair. A commercial version of the low cost braille printer was later developed with funding help from Intel.
Source: The Everyday Innovator
LEGO is very active on social media with regular posts on many different social media tools such as Vine, Instagram, Twitter, FaceBook and YouTube. Social media networks help people connect with old friends and also connect with new friends while sharing fresh content and ideas. With more than 10.6 million FaceBook likes, 300k Twitter followers and 1 million YouTube subscribers, You can see exactly how active LEGO is on social media. They are now masters of leveraging social media for product innovation, this concept is still relatively new to most.
The co-creation approach is taking over large organizations and changing how they innovate. LEGO is one of the pioneers of co-creation with many successful initiatives like the aforementioned LEGO Mindstorms, Design By Me, Cuusoo, LEGO Architecture and the latest LEGO IDEAS. Asking customers to submit new innovative ideas for LEGO sets by using an online platform to get 10,000 supporters for the idea. This is an amazing form of market research which informs LEGO of the popularity of a product before they even decide to produce it, resulting in a low risk product launch. If the inventor’s idea is chosen, LEGO offers 1% of the total net sales of any product, movie, game or TV show that results.
Customers that have new and innovative ideas with LEGO sets that they would like to share with the hope that it may lead to the release as a future LEGO product, can visit LEGO IDEAS and submit their LEGO ideas. Already, 2 of the highest selling new products were produced this way.
How it works:
Have an idea for a new LEGO set. Acceptable Project Content
Submit your idea on LEGO IDEAS. Quality tips
Get 10,000 votes to enter the LEGO review phase.
LEGO review board evaluates and decides which product will become the next LEGO product.
Receive prizes, rewards and a % of the product’s sales
Project Guidlines and House Rules
Don’t already have a super awesome innovative idea? LEGO makes it easy for you with many creator designer tips!
Lego is a very unique company. Developing modular construction products as a platform for other people’s creativity. They gain devotion and loyalty from it’s costumers and LEGO has mastered data collection process as well as delivering on promises.
Lessons: If you want to be successful with crowdsourcing, you need to master social media and all it’s tools. Companies are more likely to succeed by aligning strategic product development with social innovation initiatives. Pose relevant questions and collect the data and finally, do something with the ideas and feedback.
Submitted By: Ken Lupton
To contact the author of this entry please email at: k2lupton@uwaterloo.ca
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Programme Director, Social Media for Business Performance.