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A review by zeroone
The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World's Imagination by Jens Andersen
4.0
A history of LEGO as a company and of the family that owns it. The book starts from around 1916 when Ole Kirk Christiansen bought a carpenter's workshop in the small Danish town of Billund. The LEGO company wasn't even founded until 1932, and the plastic bricks don't even appear in the book until around page 80 or so, as before that Ole Kirk's workshops and later the LEGO company just manufactured wooden and some other plastic toys. I felt these "prehistoric" parts could've been shorter, but they do serve as character witnesses about Ole Kirk and the spirit his descendants have inherited. For example, Ole Kirk was a very progressive and curious man who always had to have the latest tools and such. He also was a man of strong faith, which probably helped when his wife died and his businesses caught fire and burned down three times over.
The book describes chronologically the highs and lows of the company and sheds light to the generational changes in the company. How do you even retire and hand a multinational company like LEGO to your offspring, and do they even want it?
Around mid-1990s LEGO had become so big it was beginning to stall under its own inertia. The then-owner, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, was ahead of his time and tried to introduce rather modern agile management principles to the company, but unfortunately with little success. LEGO's hardships eventually culminated around 2004-2005 when it turned record-breaking losses, and even the possibility of selling the company to external investors was discussed. Luckily a path out was found, and today LEGO is turning huge profits again and paying it back to the society through its foundations (which are also in the scope of the book). Interesting read!
The book describes chronologically the highs and lows of the company and sheds light to the generational changes in the company. How do you even retire and hand a multinational company like LEGO to your offspring, and do they even want it?
Around mid-1990s LEGO had become so big it was beginning to stall under its own inertia. The then-owner, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, was ahead of his time and tried to introduce rather modern agile management principles to the company, but unfortunately with little success. LEGO's hardships eventually culminated around 2004-2005 when it turned record-breaking losses, and even the possibility of selling the company to external investors was discussed. Luckily a path out was found, and today LEGO is turning huge profits again and paying it back to the society through its foundations (which are also in the scope of the book). Interesting read!