LEGO collaborations

  • Projects

I have worked with The LEGO Group, based in Billund, Denmark, on a number of projects since 2005.

From 2005, I worked with the LEGO Group on developing versions of the consultancy process, LEGO Serious Play, for purposes beyond its initial business-consultancy application. For instance, I used it as a social research methodology for the first time (covered in my 2007 book, Creative Explorations), and developed smaller and more portable applications of the LEGO Serious Play principles. I was co-author of the Open Source release of LEGO Serious Play, launched in 2010 (which you can download here [PDF, 14mb]).

From 2008-2013, I was a lead member of the LEGO Learning Institute, and have worked closely with the Institute directors and colleagues from the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, and MIT, to produce reports and materials including Defining Systematic Creativity (2009), Systematic Creativity in the Digital Realm (2010), The Future of Play: Defining the role and value of play in the 21st century (2011), and The Future of Learning (2012), all published by the LEGO Learning Institute.

In 2013 the LEGO Learning Institute was absorbed into the LEGO Foundation, who supported and published our next study, Cultures of Creativity (2013).

I have also produced videos for LEGO Education, and written and contributed to videos for the LEGO Learning Institute. I have helped to assess products for LEGO Education. And I co-produced a Systematic Creativity training pack and workshop, which has been used by all new employees at the LEGO Group in Denmark since 2009.

Some discussion and reflections on my work with LEGO appear in ‘The LEGO System as a tool for thinking, creativity, and changing the world’, a chapter that I wrote for a book called Lego Studies (2014).

In 2016-17 I worked with the LEGO Foundation on presenting material about playful learning, and on the collaboration between the LEGO Foundation and Ashoka to galvanize a global community of actors within the ‘learning through play’ ecosystem. This led to the report that I wrote, Social Entrepreneurs Re-Imagine Learning (2017), which we launched at the World Innovation Summit for Education in Qatar (#WISE2017).

In 2018 I worked with the LEGO Foundation on developing a tool to model different types of creativity, and on developing an academic research network.

Other things on this site which involve work with LEGO include:

→ William Morris, making things, Kickstarter, and LEGO (2017)

→ Making Things workshop, with LEGO Minecraft, and music, in a library (2015)

→ Research Through Design #RTD2015 reflected in LEGO (2015)

→ Technology and learning – panel discussion with Ashoka and LEGO Foundation (2014)

→ Micro LEGO Serious Play: How small can a useful tool for thinking be? (2014)

→ LEGO workshop for PhD students (2014)