MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Lego Takes Customers' Innovations Further

It is rare for companies to generate consistent commercial hits from their customers’ ideas. In fact, customer-generated innovation efforts tend to be ad hoc or difficult to sustain.1 But when they succeed, they can create new sources of revenue, outcompete internally generated ideas, and create more loyalty among customers — which explains why business leaders continue to pursue this path for idea generation.2

The Lego Group has been one of the most widely researched and emulated companies for its open innovation achievements with consumers. A crowdsourcing pilot that Lego launched in 2008 evolved into Lego Ideas, a community of more than 2.8 million customers that has shared and debated more than 135,000 ideas for Lego sets and generated significant revenues for the company. The lucky few whose ideas are commercialized (like the top-selling medieval blacksmith set) get 1% of the product’s top-line revenue — often a life-changing sum. Meanwhile, popular ideas that are not selected as Lego products can get a second chance through a crowdfunding program on BrickLink, a consumer-led channel that Lego acquired in 2019.

About the Author

Michela Beretta is an associate professor at Aarhus University. Linus Dahlander (@linusdahlander) is a professor at ESMT Berlin. Lars Frederiksen (@larsfars07) is a professor at Aarhus University. Arne Thomas is an assistant professor at Amsterdam Business School.

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