And the approach to this is thinking big, but starting really small. Jason Lopez : Perhaps one of the obvious innovations in toys is putting computers in them. David Gram : So what happens when toys and powered with artificial intelligence?
So they can actually learn and think based on the interaction with the child. And then if you add robotics, now the toys can actually behave, move the way that the kids would expect them to.
And if you add voice and speech, now the children can have conversation with the toys. And if you then connect all the toys to the internet of things, the toys can actually start playing with each other. So when the child leaves the bedroom, the toys will still be playing. It'll be like toy story, come to life, right? And on top of that, you can add augmented mixed reality, so now the child connects the physically see the stuff they imagine happening right in front of them in the physical world.
So all this has got to definitely to change the toy industry entirely. And for someone who's really, really good at injection molding, that's a big thing that we need to take seriously.
Jason Lopez : It's easy to assume Lego must be all in on information technologies infused in their toys to capture the hearts and minds of kids, as well as the pocket books of their parents. But if you look at the work the company does to understand its users, Lego's motto "only the best is good.
Gram says the world of toy making has more dimensions than just getting a child's attention. It's also about how toys affect that attention. David Gram : All these things can do great things for kids. No doubt it can empower their creativity and can create awesome things, but it can also do the opposite. It can take away the creativity. It can remove any need for imagination.
Basically hook them up to the matrix where they're just passively consuming, awesome content. That's basically pacifying them. They don't need to be creative because there are no cracks or gaps in what they're experiencing that they need to fill out. So there's a moral responsibility here for a company like Lego, but for any company in any industry to say, how do we make sure that these technologies actually deliver long-term value for users? Jason Lopez : Lego does in-home studies with families to understand how things go in households, how kids spend their time, how they play.
These understandings don't necessarily tie right back into the next toy design. Lego innovation operates a bit like a tech startup creating opportunity zones to prototype ideas, often working with partners and on an open platform. It's a strategic venture where R and D is not enough. Things need to launch and actually get tried out. David Gram : So to get it right, the first time aim to iterate, and it's easier said than done.
Everybody wants to get it right. It's in our nature. So how do we cultivate this more child is way of playing and learning. And it's about also how to measure performance. This needs to be more like a startup as something that's maturing over time and growing. Jason Lopez : The mindset of the company reflects both that of one of the world's most revered brands as if it were in Silicon Valley, but with its values still fixed to a small town in the Danish countryside where a woodworker invented a simple quality toy for children.
David Gram : The future core capability that any company needs to adopt and cultivate is that of being able to experiment and explore new territory and it sort of shadows into then the personal as well with the amount of changes happening in the world. The amount of new stuff that we constantly need to relate to is only one way to go about it.
And that is to be curious and playful and experimental about it and not be afraid of failing, not be afraid of looking foolish or not being right the first time, but just enjoy the fact that life is wonderful and it's constantly changing. David Gram It is absolutely. And the system is such that you can do anything with the bricks and they'll connect in multiple ways and there's no right and wrong.
Jason Lopez : David Gram is the co-founder and partner of diplomatic rebels based in Copenhagen. It's a firm that helps other companies with strategic innovation. I'm Jason Lopez, thank you for listening. Tech barometer is an audio podcast of The Forecast. All rights reserved. For additional legal information, please go here. Article author Martin Casado and industry experts explain why taking a hybrid multicloud approach to IT operations can help.
Enter your name:. Transcript unedited : Jason Lopez : If you've ever wondered about the company Lego Jason Lopez : And playing with Legos is emblematic of that.
Related Articles. Videos Breaking the Paradox of Cost Savings vs. Competitive Innovation. Industry Got Cyber Insurance? Agencies into Hybrid Multicloud Era? They asked customers to help design new products. In one of the first and most successful crowd-sourcing operations Lego asked fans and enthusiasts to suggest and vote on ideas for new models. Rapid prototyping. Lego was an early adopter of a concept which is now all the rage in innovation circles — the minimum viable product.
A typical engineering mistake is wanting to invent all the things the product might consist of in one go. We throw it into the market and get feedback from consumers. Study the user in action. Lego commissioned detailed ethnographic studies to determine why this was. They examined differences between how boys and girls play. Sales to girls tripled. Collaborate to innovate. In a brilliant stroke of marketing Lego licensed Star Wars characters and vehicles.
It was a marriage made in heaven for the toy company and spawned video games and short movies which became wildly popular. Innovative use of Video. Lego invested heavily in high quality movies. The Lego Batman movie grossed more at the box office than the last regular Batman movie. Each movie generated large follow-on sales of models. Galvanize the culture. As if to prove it, Trangbaek handed me his business card. It was a Minifigure of himself.
The following morning the Lego Group was due to announce its latest annual results. Today was an opportunity to meet some of its key employees, tour the factory and be among the first to step inside Lego House — a ,sq ft marvel that will open in September, and is expected to draw , visitors a year. Ingels certainly seems to have enjoyed himself: Lego House resembles 21 giant Lego bricks stacked into a 30m tower. Visitors can climb up to the rooftop garden and down the other side, pausing to take in attractions, restaurants, play zones and a gallery dedicated to fan-made Lego extravaganzas.
Life-sized Lego sculptures had been placed around the interior — a cop, a firefighter — while real-life construction workers in hi-vis tabards beavered away around them, a surreal sight. Vig Knudstorp rescued Lego by methodically rebuilding it, brick by brick.
He dumped things it had no expertise in — the Legoland parks are now owned by the British company Merlin Entertainments, for example. He slashed the inventory, halving the number of individual pieces Lego produces from 13, to 6, Brick colours had somehow expanded from the original bright yellow, red and blue, sourced from Piet Mondrian , to more than Far from killing off Lego, the internet has played a vital role in allowing fans to share their creations and promote events like Brickworld , adult Lego fan conventions.
It also started making hit toys again. As well as putting a focus back on classic Lego lines like City and Space, it has launched the ninja-themed Ninjago line, Mindstorms, kits that allow you to build programmable Lego robots, aimed at teens. And for grown-up kids, Lego Architecture, replicas of the Guggenheim, Burj Khalifa and Robie House , that last one not for the feint-hearted or time-poor — it contains 2, bricks. None of this has happened by chance.
Lego is said to conduct the largest ethnographic study of children in the world. Ninjago was crowdsourced: its first iteration featured skeletons as enemies because tests proved they were the most popular baddies among six-year-old boys, globally.
Boys tend to be a lot more about good versus evil, whereas girls really see themselves through the Mini-doll. They wanted a greater level of detail, proportions and realism. More than one adult visitor has been known to burst into tears when confronted by a key line from their childhood: in my case the Space Lego of the mids.
0コメント