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

Some 4 years ago, while cleaning our children's rooms, my wife dropped a Lego train, and the rarest thing to the utterly robust Lego happened: a little component broke off the train. It turned out to be a critical little part, making the whole train unusable. Having to explain to a 4 year old that his train was broken is nothing to look forward to as a parent, yet buying a whole new train set is unreasonably expensive as well. Our local toy store could not help out, but were kind enough to give us a Lego customer care number to call. Unassumingly we called them, having no expectations really. After all, who were we kidding, 1 component out of the zillion components Lego produces. And after all, we were just one of their millions of customers; why would they care...? We explained them what happened, explained the piece and the train model, they jotted down our name and address, and that was the last we expected to hear from it.Three weeks later a little envelope arrived. Adressed to my son (4 year olds love getting letters). It was a personalized letter from Lego to him, explaining how sad he must have felt when his mother had dropped the train. Therefore, Lego was glad to provide him with 3 new parts, no costs. And a free membership to the periodic Lego magazine.My jaws dropped. Not only did Lego totally outperform our expectations, they seemed to defy all logic. In the age of call centers and their associated customer carelessness, automation, mass production, depersonalization and standardization, they managed to do the exact opposite. It made my son and me life time fans of the company.This book is about how Lego manages to be so exceptional. Not by some wild eccentric leadership fad, but by a disciplined approach in their ways of working. Focused especially on Lego's innovation culture that developed after their near-death at the start of the century, the account stands for much more than innovation. It stands for a company with a soul and a deep-rooted belief that it wants to support children in their desire to explore, build and create. Written in a very pleasant style, it provides an in-depth account on Lego, based on a 5 year extensive study by the author David Robertson. It's highly inspirational, excellently documented and very convincing, and now gets me to understand the question how they managed to do that, which puzzled me since the day we received the spare parts for my son's broken train.

I regard this book as a best-of-breed business book. It was interesting, entertaining and educational. I found the sections that dealt with effective innovation particularly useful.Just because I like this book does not mean that it doesn't suffer from the afflictions of most business books: it is repetitive and (short) sections of it are insufferably bland. Whereas most business books feel like the original draft could have been written on one side of a single napkin in a fancy restaurant, this one feels like it was always supposed to be a book - but perhaps one that should have been half the length.

This is a compelling tale of how the Lego company foundered in 2003 by innovating in an unfocused and uncontrolled fashion, and how they turned the situation around through increased discipline, focus and execution.The story provides many thought-provoking examples of innovative business practices, such as engaging customer groups and streamlining development processes, and demonstrating how different management strategies are needs for incremental vs. disruptive innovation.But bottom line, any book that's full of Lego is also super-fun and hard to put down. I read it in a day.

I thought the story was a bit dry and difficult to follow. I did it was worth reading to understand how Lego came back from the brink of bankruptcy.

I sponged this book up in a couple days, having looked a year ago for a good overview of the company and finding none. I was pleasantly surprised to see Brick By Brick available this year, and more so when I confronted the well-researched, well-articulated lessons Robertson seeks to tease out by focusing on the topic of innovation management throughout.In places I feel redundancy sets in and the book could have been 15% shorter (though, as Robertson drives home in the LEGO Universe retrospective section, I appreciate that Robertson probably felt he could have tinkered more but chose to ship sooner rather than later, and the book is a fine first release).I can vouch for the concepts the book champions as I have now been fortunate enough to visit Billund twice myself working with a team, who has onboarded me to the innovation process as I've sought to add value to their digital strategy.Thanks to Robertson's articulation, I was able to find LEGO parallels for many of my company's own lessons learned, from uncontrolled innovation that breeds Jack Stones, to untimed innovation that breeds too many great things to be sustainable no matter how you swing it.As one other reviewer points out, LEGO should now be compared more closely to Apple than to other toy makers. It's only fair given the global cultural impact they have and are continuing to have. As Apple is to our experience with digital interactions and content, LEGO is to our experience with physical building and cognitive development.

Who ever knew that Lego was on the brink of collapse? Great tale of how this amazing brand was able to make it through a transition in play patterns and strategy. By focusing on the brick and it's core audience while looking at new opportunities through this lens, Lego was able to not only weather the storm of the early 2000's but leap ahead with breakthrough products that have pushed sales and play engagement to levels they never dreamed of. Nice work!

Excellent book!

Muy buen trabajo del autor que no sólo cita vivencias de las personas involucradas en la empresa, sino que proporciona un excelente hilo conductor con enfoque en temas particulares.

The LEGO story told by this book is remarkable and sparks creative thinking about how to design your own company.

The Lego story is nothing short of a page turner. The company has faced tormenting times and come through with flying colors. The book is brilliantly written and insightful

Well written story of a company we all love.Good business insights into the discipline required for a turnaround strategy.