Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
When Ideas Generate Value: How LEGO
Profi tably Democratized Its Relationship
with Fans
Vlada Botoric
9.1
Introduction
In a basement fi lled with buildings made of LEGO bricks, a young boy creates his
own models. Adventures are being played out by his own imagination but on his
father's LEGO setting. When that came into his father's eyes, he immediately starts
to chastise his son for ruining the setting by creating hodgepodges of different mod-
els and playing themes. The story that a young boy created was actually the plot of
The Lego Movie (
2014
) where an ordinary construction worker Emmet had been
prophesied to save the LEGO universe from the tyrannical Lord Business. Later in
the basement, the boy's father looked at his son's creations again and got impressed.
Having realized that his son based the evil Lord Business on him, the father changes
opinion and allows his son to play with his bricks however he sees them fi t. The
LEGO Movie, a computer-animated adventure comedy fi lm, successfully managed
to be a powerful story about the drawbacks of conformity while celebrating indi-
viduality and the creative potential of imagination. “Creative individuals are no lon-
ger viewed as iconoclasts; they are new mainstream” (Florida
2012
) in the emergence
of “a new economic democracy in which we all have a lead role” (Tapscott and
Anthony
2007
). According to Florida, that creative ethos that molds the core of our
identities is critical for generating creativity and commercial innovations in a
“produsage-based democratic model” (Bruns
2008
); the real driving force is the rise
of human creativity as the key factor in our economy and society. Both at work and
in other spheres of our lives, we value creativity more highly and cultivate it more
intensely than we ever before (Florida
2012
).
To cope successfully with technological progress, competitive change, and
the evolution of consumer behavior, companies continuously develop, adapt, or
