The 3rd Way of Innovation Using LEGO®️ SERIOUS PLAY®️ Method

There is no shortage of innovation advice—you have surely heard the persistent drumbeat, “disrupt or be disrupted,” for example. Conventional wisdom says that there are two types of innovation: incremental or radical. But this is a false dichotomy. According to David Robertson, author of The Power of Little Ideas: A Low-Risk, High-Reward Approach to Innovation and Faculty Director of the Executive Education program Innovating in Existing Markets: Reviving Mature Products and Services, there is another way to innovate. This distinctive approach, which Robertson refers to as the Third Way, improves the value of a core product by innovating around it. This third strategy consists of creating a family of complementary innovations around a product or service, all of which work together as a system to carry out a single strategy or purpose. And crucially, unlike disruptive or radical innovation, innovating around a key product does not change the central product in any fundamental way. While continual improvement of your product is, of course, a good thing, Robertson encourages respect for what made that product great in the first place. “People will tell you to drop your core product and go ‘disrupt,’ … but it didn’t work for LEGO!” says Robinson. “Innovation can be damaging.”