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1-Page Summary of Brick By Brick
Overview
The author has distilled the factors that make up a successful company. Those factors include leadership, culture, and strategic management. In today’s economy, innovation is crucial to long-term success because companies need to be able to adapt quickly in order to compete with other companies. If they are not able to do so, then they will fail as time goes on.
Innovation can be both a blessing and a curse. Radical innovation is often inspiring, but it requires focus to keep the business running smoothly.
The LEGO company was struggling with balancing innovation and their main product. However, after many trials and errors, the company was able to find a solution that would help them succeed in the long term. These lessons can be applied to other companies who are trying to balance innovation with their core products or services.
This passage discusses how LEGO almost went bankrupt in 2003, why it’s better to think inside the box sometimes, and why LEGO hires T-shaped people.
Big Idea #1: LEGO’s initial success came from shifting focus away from creating individual toys and focusing on developing a system of play.
Everyone knows LEGO. You probably even played with those colorful building blocks when you were younger! But have you ever thought of the company as a global corporation? It was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen, who started off making wooden toys for kids.
Kirk Christiansen, the founder of LEGO, was an innovator and therefore it makes sense that he was the first toy company in Denmark to experiment with plastic toys.
LEGO’s turning point came when Godtfred Kirk, the son of a LEGO executive, decided to scrap 90% of their portfolio to focus on one toy: the interlocking brick.
This new toy production system meant that LEGO bricks were compatible with all other sets. Kids could combine the building blocks from one kit to create buildings, cars, streetlights and traffic signs. They could also build trains and track systems using different kits.
LEGO is a toy company that was well known for its toys. The company made many different types of toys, including LEGO bricks. The company also came up with other products that could be used in conjunction with the LEGO bricks to build bigger objects and structures.
LEGO’s new system was not only fun, but also allowed LEGO to increase its share in the market. This led to more opportunities for product development.
Big Idea #2: By the late 1990s, LEGO was doing well but had to deal with a crisis.
LEGO has seen its share of ups and downs. The company’s golden age was in the late 1970s and early 1990s, when they saw high sales with their invention of a new brick design. By 1991, however, LEGO had grown complacent and failed to innovate to keep up with changing toy trends that would help them adjust for the future.
In the 1990s, LEGO’s play style was out of touch with kids. Kids were turning to VCRs, video games, cable TV and computers for their entertainment needs. This made it hard for LEGO to compete because they had a patent on their bricks until 1988 which allowed cheap imitators to flood the market.
The company’s growth was slowing down, and it had to find new ways of growing. The business cycle eventually reached its end, but the company couldn’t sustain growth without branching into different areas. LEGO faced a tough decision: keep making small changes or try something new? We can learn a lot from this story about what not to do when we’re in that situation.
