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arrangement of events (LEGO Annual Report
2003
). A collaboration of this nature
benefi ts both fans and company. LEGO therefore started building solid foundations
in order to fi ght two special challenges: fi rst, attracting and retaining these consum-
ers and, second, providing a creative and open communication environment (Zwick
et al.
2008
).
For example, the popularity of Mindstorms 2.0 prompted the LEGO Group to
develop a second edition of the robotics construction toy. “One of the goals was to
appeal not only to adults but to children as well. Mindstorms 2.0 is a toy with a
specifi c (adult) user embedded in its design, use of technology and requirements on
both the fi nancial and computational level. Mindstorms NXT products, launched in
2006, has shown how the cooperation with fans changes over time, becomes more
important and results in the adjustment of the LEGO Group to a totally new para-
digm (Lauwaert
2009
).” Through simplifying the programming language, the
LEGO Company wanted to broaden the scope of possible NXT users (Koerner
2006
). The new system is PC and Mac compatible, and the programming software
has been redesigned and is now far more intuitive and easier to use. The American
nonprofi t organization FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and
Technology) aimed to stimulate interest among children and young people for sci-
ence and technology subjects by organizing projects in which children themselves
were the driving force. FIRST LEGO League was a robotics competition for teams
of children and young people between the ages of 9 and 16 years, who competed in
several disciplines. Teams were required to build and program a LEGO
MINDSTORMS robot to perform certain tasks on a robot track, solve a research
task, and demonstrate cooperation and innovation. In 2003, the theme was Mission
Mars, and robots had to carry out assignments on Mars, for example, collect mineral
samples, build houses, collect ice samples, and free a Mars Rover which had become
stuck on a sand bank. In 2003, approx. 42,000 children participated in the competi-
tion representing 14 countries: USA, Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Germany,
Britain, France, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Singapore, and
China (LEGO Annual Report
2003
).
The market thus becomes a platform for participation in a culture of exchange,
where companies offer consumers resources to create, and where consumers offer
to companies “a contact with the fast-moving world of knowledge in general”
(Terranova
2000
, p. 37). The market, in the view of the co-creationists, has been
transformed into a channel through which “human intelligence” renews its capacity
to produce (Terranova, ibid). For example, these dedicated Mindstorms users are
considered as “lead users,” a term introduced by innovation expert Eric von Hippel
(
2005
, p. 22). Lead users are not only quick in adopting new products by making a
purchase of them, but importantly, also in adapting these products so that they might
better fi t their personal needs. Hippel defi nes lead users as either persons or compa-
nies that are at the edge of market trends and therefore experience needs that others
will soon experience as well. More so, lead users innovate products because they
anticipate a relatively high benefi t from doing so (ibid.).
“While user-generated websites present arguably some of the 'purest' examples
of consumer government through co-creation, the same principle operates
