Lego Strategy
📌 Project Overview
Reimagined LEGO’s growth strategy through a foresight-led design research project at OCAD University. Acting as strategic advisors to LEGO’s board, we proposed future-facing architectural directions rooted in user insight, market signals, and system-level opportunity.
Timeline: January 7–April 7, 2020
Team: Aneesha Kotti, Gulna Joshi, Shahria Khan
Contribution: Ideation, Conceptualization, Strategy, Storytelling
🎯 Challenge Framing
Tasked with identifying transformational strategies for an iconic global brand, we used speculative foresight and innovation frameworks to reframe LEGO’s long-term growth — beyond toys, toward ecosystems.
🧠 Design Research & Discovery
Used horizon scanning, customer interviews, and orthodoxy analysis to uncover eight outdated beliefs limiting LEGO’s potential. Applied “Never Say” tools to provoke flips in thinking — revealing untapped opportunities in lifestyle, learning, and participatory design.
🔍 Core Competency Mapping
Conducted deep historical and strategic analysis of LEGO’s legacy to identify its true differentiators. Mapped basic, latent, and future competencies as levers for market transformation and cross-industry expansion.
💬 Customer Insight Generation
We designed and conducted semi-structured interviews across demographics to surface emotional drivers behind LEGO engagement. These insights shaped the strategic themes and validated emerging user needs.
🚀 Strategic Vectors
We generated 20+ future-facing strategic vectors through divergent brainstorming and pattern recognition. Each vector represented a new market narrative, business model, or community-centered initiative for LEGO’s evolution.
🏗 Strategic Architecture: My LEGO Life
After that we synthesized high-impact vectors into strategic architectures aligned with themes like circularity, creativity, and co-production. The final prototype — “My LEGO Life” — envisioned a co-creative ecosystem empowering adult users to learn, build, and monetize.
We identified four key leverage points through which LEGO could bring its powerful architecture into the real world for the makers of today and tomorrow. The end solution is an imaginary platform www.mylegolife.com where adult LEGO users can build, share, produce and create practically anything by leveraging four identified vectors. Lifestyle for Grown-Ups, Generative Community, Crowdfunding Platforms, and a Connected Ecosystem — these were the four pillars of our solution, designed to stretch LEGO’s brand into new cultural relevance while staying true to its ethos.
🌐 Why It Mattered
We positioned LEGO not just as a toy company, but as a platform for creativity, collaboration, and community-building — unlocking new value streams and future-proofing the brand against generational shifts.
🙋♂️ My Contribution
Led ideation, conceptual storytelling, and strategic framing. I helped shape research synthesis into a compelling narrative — documenting our findings, crafting visual maps, and ensuring insights connected clearly to opportunity.
📚 Learnings
Adapted to COVID-19 constraints by pivoting toward secondary research and remote interviews. Learned the importance of speculative design, strategic framing, and team-wide synthesis in navigating uncertain futures.
⚠️ Limitations
Due to pandemic restrictions, we couldn’t validate strategies through real-world testing or participatory design in LEGO stores. The project remains hypothetical, though elements of it mirror LEGO’s current evolution in open innovation and adult engagement.