Lego launches ‘serious play’ bricks to help businesses

Lego is launching its first product specifically for adults. The range aims to help managers develop business strategies using Lego bricks.

Called Lego Serious Play, the concept claims to turn boardrooms into “constructive playgrounds”, where managers and employees use Lego bricks to build representations of their businesses.

The first application, “Real Time Strategy”, goes on sale in 2002. It lets executives build a “model” of their company by asking questions like “Is your company more like a fortress or a race car? Small and dense? Large and interconnected?”

Using more than 6,000 bricks and figures taken from Lego ranges such as Technic, Duplo and Scala, the executives then build a representation of the “landscape” around the business – the suppliers, clients, competitors – and how its features are interconnected.

Lego says that the resulting model can be used by businesses to explore different scenarios and develop company strategies.

Dr Jonathan Roos, director of the Imagination Lab Foundation, which conducted the research leading to Lego Serious Play, says: “It is amazing what happens when executives build a 3-D model of their business, which they can take apart, change and physically walk around and discuss. They begin to see possibilities that never would have occurred to them with traditional approaches.”

Real Time Strategy will be sold through Executive Discovery, a corporate entity set up to develop and manage the Lego Serious Play brand.

A second application aimed at exploring individual identity within a company will also be launched next year.