Design Research in Companies

Renewed Innovation Power in the LEGO Group

The LEGO Group’s development of future play experiences takes place in a process involving designers, market analysts, researchers and users.
Photo: © 2011 The LEGO Group

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A shared language that enables a strategic dialogue about innovation across the entire LEGO Group. Clear goals and thus a clear sense of direction for innovative initiatives. Clarification of competence needs in relation to project planning. These are some of the benefits that the LEGO Group is now reaping after recently completing a four-year design-based project that came to be called Design for Business.

By Hans Emborg Bünemann

The designers in the LEGO Group spearheaded the development of an innovation concept that has given the company renewed innovation power over the past four years. With methods drawn partly from the designers’ toolkit, the company has developed a holistic approach to innovation and project management. In particular, the shared understanding of the innovation concept has paid off, says Torsten Bjørn, senior director of the LEGO Group’s Design Management department.
“The starting point was that at every meeting we talked about the need to be more innovative – but how?” says Torsten Bjørn, who was one of the key drivers of the project Design for Business (D4B).
“We really lacked a shared language about innovation. This project gave us that language and the shared frame of reference that now enables us, in the LEGO Product & Marketing Development department, to strengthen the strategic dialogue across the company about what innovation means to the LEGO Group,” he says.

Torsten Bjørn highlights the importance of developing a shared language that all staff members can use to discuss and work with innovation. Photo: © 2011 The LEGO Group

Innovation Model Provides Clarity

The corner stone of the project is an innovation model that the LEGO Group’s design department developed in cooperation with the Dutch design agency PARK Design Management. The model visualises the LEGO Group’s innovation process and clarifies the various dimensions in the individual development projects.
“Previously, we would tend to think almost exclusively in terms of tangible products when we talked about innovation,” Torsten Bjørn explains. “Thanks to the innovation model, innovation thinking has now expanded to include the pillars of business, product, communication and process. Among other outcomes, the holistic approach to innovation is resulting in stronger concepts and much more efficient resource management and an improved ability to predict competence needs in each individual project – and, in fact, in a whole portfolio of projects.”

Torsten Bjørn explains that the innovation model helps to clarify where the innovation challenges can be found, because it makes it possible to grasp the big picture while also focusing on the individual pillars.
“This grasp of the big picture in combination with the different scenarios set up by our designers lets us do benchmarking between different concepts. That gives us a far better basis for prioritising and selecting concepts, which we then ensure commitment for moving ahead with,” says Torsten Bjørn.

Big Picture and Specific Details

The shared innovation language that the D4B concept has created for the whole company, says Torsten Bjørn, ensures a more holistic mindset throughout the company in relation to working with innovation – from the top executive level of the LEGO Group to the task level. He highlights the designers’ ability to apply holistic thinking in order to create a coherent concept while simultaneously taking a concrete and visual approach when presenting new ideas.
“The combination of the holistic mindset and the ability to zoom in on individual details is crucial,” he says. “Furthermore, the designers are very good at converting concepts and business ideas to clear visual representations. Communication and presentation techniques are some of designers’ key competences.”

Among other things, the LEGO Group draws on insights from design management research in their strategic approach to innovation, Anne Flemmert Jensen explains. Photo: Anne Enemark

Concept Development

In the LEGO Concept Lab, which is a department under Product & Marketing Development that is involved in creating future play experiences, we find Anne Flemmert Jensen. She is responsible for making sure that business research and design are addressed in a strategic and systematic manner as integrated aspects of the design process. Anne Flemmert Jensen explains that the innovation model is essential for the creative processes. It serves as a sort of master plan that everyone, regardless of professional background and specific professional terminology, has to relate to, she says.
“When someone presents a proposal for a new concept, the innovation model poses a set of specific questions in relation to each of the four pillars. That makes it clear, for example, whether the target group for a new concept is too narrow, or whether the play experience that the concept promises the consumer matches the LEGO Group’s brand and our philosophy of play and learning. The model ensures a uniform approach to the innovation process and thus serves as a common reference for the shared innovation language that the LEGO Group has developed as a result of the D4B process,” she says.

Research as a Source of Knowledge and Inspiration

According to Anne Flemmert Jensen, one characteristic of the LEGO Group’s approach to innovation is that the creative concept development is constantly assessed in relation to the overall corporate strategy. Secondly, the designers and other creative staff members involved in concept development now base their work on new insights into the consumers and the marketplace, which the LEGO Group generates by means of the latest design research methods. That may include ethnographic studies of certain consumer segments, co-design and open innovation. Thirdly, the company takes an ongoing critical stance to its own methods.

Anne Flemmert Jensen underscores the importance of the research that enables this strategic approach to innovation. Both the empirical methods for gathering insights and the critical assessment of the methods applied reflect a practical use of research-based knowledge, she says and adds,
“The LEGO Group’s emphasis on creating productive interactions between creative holism and logical market orientation draws on studies of design management, a field of research that is seeing substantial growth precisely because its relevance is becoming increasingly evident. Generally, the research environments are a great source for us as we develop new methods for successful innovation,” says Anne Flemmert Jensen, who worked as a design researcher at the Kolding School of Design until late 2010.

She explains that among other things, the LEGO Group works with the term interaction-driven innovation. “Innovation emerges in an ongoing interaction between the designers in the creative environment and the market analysts, supplemented with insights from users, university researchers and other experts,” she says.