Structured innovation, via LEGO

Wharton professor David Robertson has discussed how LEGO, after some trial and error, adopted an innovation strategy in which the innovation occurs within fairly structured parameters.

[I]f you go to work for LEGO, it’s very likely you will be told: “Work on a great police station. Work on a great fire truck. Give us a great LEGO race car. And by the way, don’t use any kind of piece or shape that you want or color that you want. Use this very limited palette of pieces. Because we can use these pieces in lots of different sets and make them in very high volume and make a lot of profit from every set that you make. We’re going to be pretty much guaranteed of that because we have a limited platform that we work from, a limited system of play.”

Read the entire article, including LEGO's previous experiment with unstructured innovation, here.