Billund, Denmark, 1932, and a Danish carpenter called Ole Kirk Kristiansen is about to create a billion-kroner start-up. Kristiansen’s furniture business was going bust. So, as the tech bros of Silicon Valley like to say, the Dane decided to ‘pivot.’
Kristiansen stopped making furniture his neighbours could no longer afford in the Great Depression and started making something else – small wooden toys. The famous stud-and-tube bricks came a little later, in 1958. But without the founder’s initial strategic shimmy LEGO would never have been born.
Last year, LEGO turned over an impressive DKK 83.5 billion and made a net profit of DKK 16.7 billion. Part of the reason? Smartphones, the thinking goes, are making children dumber. So, the less time spent scrolling the better. And LEGO helps stop the scroll.
As The Guardian notes, “Lego said it could be benefiting from parents’ desire to keep children…away from smartphones as sales rose 12%, helped by strong sales of its Botanicals and Formula One grand prix-themed sets.”
“Research from the audience research company GWI,” the paper comments, “found that social media addiction ranked among parents’ top three fears for their children from a list that included the climate crisis and war.”
“We see ourselves as competing for children’s time,” Niels B Christiansen, LEGO’S CEO, told the broadsheet. “The most important thing is to provide relevant and exciting experiences, and that could keep them away from smartphones.”
And, some argue, unlike modern phones, play, makes kids smarter.
“Children thrive when they play,” Dr Sara Baker, Professor of Developmental Psychology and Education at the University of Cambridge told Fast Company. “There are few other activities or experiences that a child can have that shape their learning, development, and wellbeing in such a holistic way…Through play, children develop ‘superpowers’– skills like communication, confidence, teamwork, and creativity.”
“Parents are becoming far more intentional about limiting screen time and looking for products that encourage focused, imaginative, or physical play,” says Drayton’s Nick Maughan. “You can see it in the growth of companies like Tonies, whose screen free audio devices have scaled rapidly. It’s part of a wider ‘digital detox’ movement that is shaping consumer behaviour.”
Meta, Microsoft, Google, LEGO. Which of those companies will still be around in another hundred years’ time? The smart money is on carpenter Kristiansen’s.