Lego – Innovation and Strategic Management Annotated Bibliography
Article One:
Innovation and Strategic Management Annotated Bibliography
Shellshear, E. (2016). From Bankruptcy to Industry Leading Success – The LEGO Story. Retrieved from www.innovationmanagement.se:
This article highlights what LEGO has done to come back from their near bankruptcy that LEGO faced in 2004. It was at that time they hired a new CEO, restructured, and entered into more licensing partnerships. Part of the restructure was hiring “adult fans of LEGO” to their design team and also beginning to crowdsource ideas for new toy kits. Through this user input they opened the LEGO Ideas portal in which fans from all over the world can submit ideas for new LEGO combinations. The prototypes are then voted on by consumers around the world. Barring any licensing problems, the winning designs are manufactured and sold, most times selling for much more than their regular LEGO sets. This time of innovation helps bring “big” company resources to fans who have ideas. According to Shellshear, it develops “a symbiosis between two powerful branches of science, behavioral economics and innovation.”
Article 2
Hoehn, R. (2016). Involving the Crowd in Product Development. Retrieved from www.innovationmanagement.se:
Though not given a name until 2006 by Wired Magazine, crowdsourcing has been around for hundreds of years. This article showcases how involving the consumer with new ideas and innovation can help a company or product continue to grow or even bring it back from extinction. The article gives the example of Reading Rainbow which is a children’s reading show on public television that has been cancelled for many years, until recently when fans using Kickstarter.com raised enough money to get the show back into production. One of the most well-known crowdsourcing products would be Wikipedia which is designed to gather information