THE 3RD WAY OF INNOVATION USING LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® METHOD

HOW DID LEGO® DO IT?

The Third Way challenges the familiar belief that innovation must choose between two extremes: small incremental improvements or bold disruptive breakthroughs. It offers a more practical middle path. Instead of trying to reinvent the core product or abandon it for something radically new, the Third Way focuses on building a family of complementary innovations around an existing product or service. These “little ideas” may appear modest on their own, but together they make the core offering more valuable, distinctive, and harder for competitors to copy.

 

The benefit of this approach is that it allows organisations to innovate without gambling the business. Radical innovation can be expensive, uncertain, and culturally threatening. Incremental innovation, on the other hand, can become too cautious and easy to imitate. The Third Way works because it keeps the organisation anchored to what customers already know and value, while expanding the experience around that offering. Companies can create new services, channels, partnerships, packaging, data, communities, or customer experiences that reinforce the core promise.

 

This matters because customers rarely judge a product in isolation. They judge the whole system around it: how easy it is to buy, use, trust, maintain, share, and return to. When many small innovations work together, they create a stronger ecosystem of value. Each idea may be simple, but collectively they increase relevance, loyalty, and differentiation.

 

In essence, the Third Way works because it is strategic, cumulative, and customer-centred. It turns innovation from a search for one big idea into the disciplined orchestration of many small ones. Rather than asking, “What entirely new thing should we create?”, it asks a more useful question: “What can we add around what already works to make it significantly more valuable?” This makes innovation more accessible, less risky, and more connected to real customer needs.

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LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® METHOD

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method is a facilitated methodology that helps people think, communicate, and solve complex challenges by building models with LEGO bricks and reflecting on the meaning behind them. While it may look playful at first glance, it is a serious process designed to unlock deeper insight, fuller participation, and more honest conversation.

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What makes this approach powerful is that it allows people to express ideas that are often difficult to surface through discussion alone. By building first and speaking from what they have built, participants tend to think more clearly, contribute more equally, and engage more openly. For organisations navigating complexity, ambiguity, or change, this creates a very different quality of conversation.