Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
user-created LEGO content. The content on ReBrick is not what LEGO sets can be
bought in a shop, but creations made by teenage and adult builders, who use their
creativity to build their own models called MOCs (My Own Creation).
More than 400.000 h is being spent weekly on LEGO activities (LEGO Group
2014
). Such an open innovation suggests that valuable ideas and creations come
from both outside and inside the company. This approach placed external ideas and
external path to market on the same level of importance as that reserved for internal
ideas and path to markets in the earlier era (Chesbrough et al.
2006
). “Open
Innovation is a paradigm that assumed that LEGO should use external ideas as well
as internal ideas, and internal and external path to market. New LEGO business
model supported by the open innovation processes utilized both external and inter-
nal ideas to create value.” The LEGO Group, therefore, had placed more emphasis
on using leading-edge technologies in ways that support its brand values, such as
extending the “intelligent brick” concept of LEGO MINDSTORMS to open up
whole new ways of playing and learning, as well as initiatives such as LEGO
Studios, putting the power of moviemaking in the hands of children (LEGO Annual
Report
2000
). Mindstorms consists of computational LEGO bricks that allow you
to create your own robots. Mindstorms was developed in close contact with the MIT
Epistemology and Learning Group founded by Seymour Papert. It is named after
Papert's book Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas (1993). In
1985, the LEGO Company started working together with Papert “with an eye toward
introducing a computer-driven LEGO product” (Wiencek 1987, p. 102 in Lauwaert
2009
). Papert is the founding father of the educational theory constructionism
(“learning by making”), based on the work by Swiss philosopher and psychologist
Jean Piaget (Papert
1991
). In 1998, the LEGO Group launched the Mindstorms
User Groups (MUGs) which allowed for social interaction, knowledge sharing, and
which gave online and face-to-face access to inspiration and input from like-minded
others. LEGO Mindstroms consumers did not accept the products as they were, but
they constantly modifi ed, improved, and created new products and service solutions
that better fi tted their needs and wants. “They did not wait for the fi rm to take action
on things which concerned the products, nor did they contact the fi rm to learn more
about the products, or to have answers and problems regarding the use of the prod-
ucts solved. Instead, they did it for themselves via the communities, the guidebooks,
the online resources, and the many other things they created (Antorini
2007
).”
Zwick et al. (
2008
) argue in this context that the discourse of value co-creation
stands for a notion of modern corporate power that is no longer aimed at disciplin-
ing consumers and shaping actions according to a given norm but at working with
and through the freedom of the consumer. For Prahalad and Ramaswamy and others
(c.f. Tapscott and Williams
2006
), consumers have specialized competencies and
skills that companies are unable to match or even understand. The most popular
section of the LEGO Club was “Cool Creations.” It was a place where members
could show pictures of their own LEGO models and tell other members a little about
themselves. LEGO Company's “What will you make?” road tour of North America
and the LEGO World Event in the Netherlands, attended by more than 40,000 visi-
tors, demonstrated the extent to which LEGO fans had become involved in the
