Crowdsourcing Innovation: Lego Cuusoo website & Minecraft Microworld success Case Study

Lego is a popular line of construction toys that consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and accompanied by range of gears, minifigures and various other parts that can be assembled and connected in different ways, to build vehicles, buildings, and even working robots. One of the biggest selling points of Lego Toys despite being costly is that toys stimulate the imagination and creativity of the customers. Lego was almost bankrupt in the 2004, as children turned away from the plastic bricks in favor of video games and computers and according to Harvard Business Review, “Central to LEGO’s turnaround is a new structure for strategically coordinating innovation activities, led by a cross-functional team: the Executive Innovation Governance Group. LEGO managers take a broad view of innovation that includes not only new products but pricing plans, community building, business processes, and channels to market, all of which can be powerful business drivers. The company distributes responsibilities for innovation in all areas across four groups and expects different degrees of innovativeness from each of them.”

Innovation is at the heart of the Lego survival and further continuation of its innovation strategy, Lego launched Cuusoo website in 2008 which allows users to submit ideas for Lego products to be turned into potential sets and users may create a page about their proposed idea for a set. Once the project reaches 10,000 supporters, it is then reviewed by the Cuusoo team who then decide on whether to produce it and once decided to produce, the ideator receives a 1% royalty on the net revenue. All the ideas related to alcohol, sex, drugs, religious references, post-WWII warfare or based on a first person shooter that are deemed inappropriate for younger Lego fans are rejected by the company. The term Cuusoo is Japanese and means imagination or wish. Cuusoo System, a subsidiary of the Japanese Elephant Designs, has been collaborating with LEGO for the past ten years and the company currently manages two platforms, Cuusoo MUJI and Lego Cuusoo. There are about 340,000 active users and 90 percent of Lego Cuusoo users come from overseas. Lego Cuusoo website also helps in strengthening the Lego player community as player and user communities are essential for the innovation and brand building strategy of the company. Along with company’s internal designers, the Cuusoo community innovators will speed up the product innovation process and bring new innovative products to the market on regular basis.

Some of the ideas that already hit the shelves are Shinkai 6500, a model based on a real submarine, Hayabusa 369-piece, model of the Japanese spacecraft was made by Daisuke Okubo and Lego Minecraft, a set based on the video game Minecraft. Lego Minecraft Micro World is a Lego set based on the sandbox video game Minecraft, which revolves around the game's player character, Steve, and one of the game's enemies, the Creeper.  Mojang started a project on the Lego CUUSOO program and within a matter of days; the 10,000 signature objective was achieved with support of Minecraft community. Sandbox is a type of video game level design where a player can roam freely through a virtual world and has tools to modify the world themselves and create how they play. According to Forbes, “Minecraft is a legitimate worldwide phenomenon, a building block video game that launched in 2009 and now has over 8 million paying customers and a total of 40 million users worldwide, its own conference, and a legion of YouTube stars.” Lego Minecraft Micro World was widely popular which led to shortages as both Minecraft players and other enthusiasts bought this upon its release and forced to ship more sets during the holidays.

Lego innovation platform Cuusoo is a win-win for both the Lego player community and the company as number of ideas generated will be more and company can rely on its player community and other creative players whose ideas will be more relevant and chance of them being successful will be more compared to the ideas by internal designers within Lego. This is also most cost effective, speedier and easiest way of engaging with player and creative communities and they are just sharing only 1% of net revenues as royalty. The voting mechanism not only helps in selecting the best ideas but also helps in creating buzz about the product even before they are manufactured and there will be a ready market available even before the product launch who will be interested to buy. Crowdsourcing innovation is being adopted by businesses and Lego is one company that is using this methodology extremely effectively and as discussed innovation and creativity are essential for Lego’s long term survival. Lego is facing tough competition from videogames and online based games that are attracting the players more. Lego has to constantly innovate and launch new sets on regular basis to keep its consumers attracted to its product.

Case Study - Crowd sourcing @ Mattel – Open Innovation & Collaboration with Customers

Mattel, Inc. designs and manufactures world renowned and best-selling toys and for more than 50 years Mattel had been innovating, designing new toys, reinventing the way children play with each generation and had launched new line of toys for its most popular brands like Barbie, Hot Wheels, etc. Creativity, Innovation, cultural heritage of the company and vision is a must for a company like Mattel to survive and develop the iconic toys for the children. Another critical success factor for Mattel is, the company uses innovation to address existing trends in today’s marketplace and transforms toys into sophisticated gadgets, bringing a new dimension to how kids play. Take for instance Barbie Dolls are portrayed with different careers like Doctor, Teacher, Marine, etc.  The quest for innovation have forced Mattel to adopt a new method of product development process in 2001 called Project Platypus conducted three times a year in which a dozen employees from all levels of experience, with various skill sets and backgrounds were assigned the task of ideating and developing a completely new brand in 12 weeks through intensive and unique brainstorming process. Outside speakers like comedians were brought in to entertain the team and they were given freedom of time to explore and create new concepts like Ello, Construction set for Girls. This is how innovation is fueled within Mattel internally along with its constant innovation and development process the employees engage daily. The company design center called Handler Team Center had undergone an internal design refresh in 2009 to create a more creative and collaborative work environment and currently features a ramp at the front door which slopes up from the parking lot, allowing full-sized Hot Wheels cars to drive right into the building.

Mattel went one step further and decided to engage their customers in their innovation and development of new toys and developing the existing toys even further. In January 2010, Mattel launched a month-long voting campaign open to anyone for Barbie's next career on Barbie.com, Barbie's Twitter and Facebook pages, in addition to a bus and billboard campaign in New York and more than 600,000 votes were cast during the voting. The end result was Computer engineer Barbie "won the popular vote" and anchorwoman won the girls' vote.  Since its inception Barbie went on to have more than 130 other professions, frequently reflecting or even predicting societal change. In September 2012, Mattel has announced an Open Innovation initiative with Genius Crowds to develop crowd-sourced product ideas for their most revered brands of Hot Wheels and Barbie bicycles for young children aged 4-6 years old and the company is asking its customers to provide innovative product ideas and actively engage in the innovation process. Through this platform the company is looking to maintain an open two way communication with consumers about their ideas and product needs by constantly exchanging ideas with the company. Along with crowdsourcing the ideas and creativity the company is looking to constantly stay in touch with and meet the needs of kids and their parents. The company continuously focuses on translating entertainment brands to toys and creates long-term, sustainable properties with global product footprints and relying on crowdsourcing for achieving this goal.