Brick by Brick
How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry
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- 9,49 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
LEGO is one of the world's best-loved and most familiar brands, adored by generations of children. What is less well known, though, is how close this iconic company came to total collapse in 2003.
Brick by Brick is the compelling story of a Danish family-owned company that enjoyed decades of success before its inability to keep in step with a rapidly changing market brought it crashing to earth. It's also the story of an extraordinary recovery. As disaster stared them in the face, the management of LEGO embarked on an audacious and innovative plan to turn their fortunes around, and then painstakingly implemented it. Today, the company is riding high once again, and enjoying results that are the envy of their competitors.
Granted unprecedented access to every part of the LEGO Group, David Robertson not only charts each twist in the company's story but explains precisely what went wrong and how it was fixed. His clear-sighted analysis will prove invaluable to all those who want to understand how companies can not only ride the storm of change, but benefit from it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
LEGO's iconic building system is a favorite of children and parents worldwide. Wharton professor Robertson's entertaining, informative, and fast-paced account of LEGO's rise, fall, and subsequent victory in the marketplace will have readers rooting for the survival of the little brick. Writing with former Fast Company senior editor Breen (The Responsibility Revolution), Robertson recounts how in 1932, founder Ole Kirk Christiansen, a Danish master carpenter and toymaker, spent more than a decade perfecting the plastic brick; how his son Godtfred "bet on the brick" in the mid-1950s and developed play systems that propelled the company's expansion through the next several decades; and how grandson Kjeld drove global growth from the 1970s to the early 2000s. The majority of the book examines the company's precarious health over the last decade. A turnaround operator's attempted innovation backfires and leaves the company's balance sheet bleeding beyond repair. In the end, a new CFO and CEO take draconian measures to repair the company, focusing on "profitable innovation" rather than innovation for innovation's sake and listening to the customer. This book will be a valuable read for any business leader or student, but will also delight those familiar with the beloved toy. 37 b&w photos, 8-page insert.
