Top executives at Lego have been using German and US anthropology in their road to continued success. This was done by placing anthropologist researchers into families, seeing how they interact, and, with a special focus on their play.
In an attempt to get Lego back on track, executives sought to demystify the notion that customers “no longer had to time to play” through research in the field of US anthropology. They wanted to figure out if 21st century “plug and play” games were rendering old-school Lego play unpopular.
Interestingly what happened in this US anthropology research was that it was found that children these days do still have a lot of free time and in this time, they enjoy tackling challenging problems. Further, when they weren’t being supervised, their behavior and actions were different to when they were being supervised.
Interestingly what has been found – by researchers Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel Rasmussen, (ReD Associates’ founding partners) – is that the way to really understand what’s going on is by anthropology. That, as opposed to questionnaires and spreadsheets. Culturally going in and experiencing what is happening is going to give us a much more accurate analysis of what children like to do. At least, that is what Lego has found. And they are pretty successful.