Critically discuss the role of users in Legos approach to innovation Essay

Critically discuss the role of users in Legos approach to innovation and consider whether the strategy could be put to use in other organisations - Essay Example Later the product range shifted to a set of interlocking bricks which was launched in the market in 1953 but failed because of the consumer’s perception towards plastic toys was strong. By 1959 the company shifted completely to manufacturing plastic bricks and related products and stopped producing wooden toys. The company adopted a series of change with product innovations, segmenting and targeting markets, figures, adding wheels, switching to acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plastic rather than cellulose acetate, and addition of instruction manuals. Such changes helped Lego for further development and by 1988 there exist almost 50 elements in the toy system of Lego. It manufactured Duplo with large bricks for younger children and for the older ones it had Lego Technic Builders. The growth of Lego increased throughout the 20th century and it ranked in top ten toymakers in the world. Their product range diversified through models cars, train sets and robotics and even the diver sification was seen in the architecture to include programmability and control in order to support these toys (Chesbrough , 2003, pp.76-77). In 1999 the fortune magazine stated that Lego is the ‘toy of century’. The Lego’s operations faced competition due to evolution of computer games which attracted the younger generation and even its costly toys in the high cost economy created pressure in its operations. The low cost toys caused a problem for Lego to remain competitive in the market. As the potential configuration of a small number bricks were huge which involved the users more in the Lego concept. The Lego toys has been bought by the people to make house and cars who then reassemble the bricks in the own user created approach. From the year 2000 Lego has been keeping at the centre of its strategy the user linked approach. The company in order to improve the efficiency of production started developing digital models of the bricks and