Sometimes radical yet always applicable, Brick by Brick abounds with real-world lessons for unleashing breakthrough innovation in your organization, using LEGO–which experienced one of the most remarkable business transformations in recent history–as a business model.

As LEGO failed to keep pace with the revolutionary changes in kids’ lives and began sliding into irrelevance, the company’s leaders implemented some of the business world’s most widely espoused prescriptions for boosting innovation. Ironically, these changes pushed the iconic toymaker to the brink of bankruptcy, showing that what works in theory can fail spectacularly in the brutally competitive global economy.

It took a new LEGO management team–faced with the growing rage for electronic toys, few barriers to entry, and ultra-demanding consumers (ten-year old boys)–to reinvent the innovation rule book and transform LEGO into one of the world’s most profitable, fastest-growing companies. 

Along the way, Brick by Brick reveals how LEGO:

– Became truly customer-driven by co-creating with kids as well as its passionate adult fans
– Looked beyond products and learned to leverage a full-spectrum approach to innovation
– Opened its innovation process by using both the “wisdom of crowds” and the expertise of elite cliques
– Discovered uncontested, “blue ocean” markets, even as it thrived in brutally competitive red oceans
– Gave its world-class design teams enough space to create and direction to deliver built a culture where profitable innovation flourishes

Whether you’re a senior executive looking to make your company grow, an entrepreneur building a startup from scratch, or a fan who wants to instill some of that LEGO magic in your career, you’ll learn how to build your own innovation advantage, brick by brick.

Many Christians are fearful of engaging in conversation with atheists – believing that they will be hostile to Christian beliefs and conversations about the Bible. This short book is designed to help both Christians and whole churches understand more about the questions and issues that atheists of various kinds have about Christian faith, and to reach out to them with the good news of the Gospel.

Conventional wisdom today says that to survive, companies must move beyond incremental, sustaining innovation and invest in some form of radical innovation. “Disrupt yourself or be disrupted!” is the relentless message company leaders hear. The Power of Little Ideas argues there’s a “third way” that is neither sustaining nor disruptive. This low-risk, high-reward strategy is an approach to innovation that all company leaders should understand so that they recognize it when their competitors practice it, and apply it when it will give them a competitive advantage. This distinctive approach has three key elements: – It consists of creating a family of complementary innovations around a product or service, all of which work together to make that product more appealing and competitive. – The complementary innovations work together as a system to carry out a single strategy or purpose. – Crucially, unlike disruptive or radical innovation, innovating around a key product does not change the central product in any fundamental way. In this powerful, practical book, Wharton professor David Robertson illustrates how many well-known companies, including CarMax, GoPro, LEGO, Gatorade, Disney, USAA, Novo Nordisk, and many others, used this approach to stave off competitive threats and achieve great success. He outlines the organizational practices that unintentionally torpedo this approach to innovation in many companies and shows how organizations can overcome those challenges. Aimed at leaders seeking strategies for sustained innovation, and at the quickly growing numbers of managers involved with creating new products, The Power of Little Ideas provides a logical, organic, and enduring third way to innovate.