Assignment task:
JØRGEN VIG KNUDS TORP, CEO of Lego Group
With the rising popularity of videogames and PCs in the 1990s, children began putting away their Lego sets and playing with electronic games instead. By 2003, Lego Group, a family-owned Danish business, was losing millions of dollars a year despite their attempts to stay afloat by opening Lego theme parks. The parks turned out to be unprofitable. However, rather than seek a new direction, Lego continued to escalate their commitment to the theme parks. In 2004, 35-year-old Jørgen Vig Knudstorp was appointed CEO of Lego. Knudstorp, who had joined the company in 2001, was the first head of the company to come from outside the Christiansen family. One of Knudstorp's first steps was to shift the emphasis from "nurturing the child" to making money for the company as the top priority. He sold off the theme parks, which had proven to be a weakness, assessed the threats to the company (the rising popularity of videogames), and sought feedback in redesigning Lego products to meet the demands of the market. To achieve this end, he enlisted the help of thousands of Lego "superusers" and rewarded them for their feedback. Unlike most companies that test children's toys using children, Knudstorp chose to primarily use adult Lego fans. Why adults instead of children?"These superusers," Knudstorp told Harvard Business Rev iew, "can articulate the product strengths and weaknesses that young children may sense but can't express."* Always on the lookout for new opportunities, Knudstorp expanded into the movie business. 399The Lego Movie (2014) brought in more than $460 million in ticket sales. A sequel, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part was released in 2019. The Lego Batman Movie was also released in 2017. As a result of Knudstorp's leadership, Lego Group has rebounded, with profits totaling over $500 million in 2015. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Boss, J. A. (2020). THiNK (5th ed.). McGraw-Hill Higher Education (US).
1. Relate Knudstorp's strategies to the SWOT model discussed earlier in the chapter.
2. Go online or visit a store, such as Walmart, which carries Lego products. Make a note of how the different Lego products appeal to today's young people.