DAVID ROBERTSON joined the faculty of the Wharton School in 2011. He teaches Innovation and Product Development in Wharton’s undergraduate, MBA and executive education programmes. From 2002 until 2010, Robertson was the LEGO Professor of Innovation and Technology Management at Switzerland’s Institute for Management Development (IMD).
BILL BREEN is the co-author of The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win (Jossey-Bass, 2010) and of The Future of Management (Harvard Business School Press, 2007).
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.
The raw material he deals with is every bit as durable and gripping as Lego bricks. . .Robertson’s take on Lego’s success holds plenty of lessons for companies pondering how to remain innovative in a fast-changing world.A nuanced and readable case study.
