Event Recap: August Book Club

by Dallas SWE on in Meetings

On Sunday, August 19, SWE members and friends gathered at Corner Bakery Cafe in Dallas to discuss our most recent Book Club selection, Brick by Brick, How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry. The book outlines LEGO’s early success with their system of plastic bricks and themed sets, through their struggles in the late 90s and early 2000s where unbridled innovation projects and cultural shifts in children’s attention to video games nearly drove LEGO out of existence, and how LEGO turned things around by refocusing and streamlining their design and production efforts and embracing robotic and movie-themed toy sets.

Most of the group had fond memories of themselves and their families playing with LEGO during childhood and most of us were unaware of their past business struggles. A few attendees were surprised that we’d select such a business-centric book, but we found that gaining insight into the priorities of management vs. engineers will be valuable in our professional roles. It was interesting to read about how LEGO planned from the beginning to create bricks that are compatible with one another across their entire product portfolio, making collections infinitely extensible over decades of enjoyment. We also discussed how LEGO balanced the competing interests of parents (who buy the toys) and their children (the end-users).

Check out this book for yourself and stay tuned for announcements on the date, location, and book selection for our next Book Club meeting! Join our Goodreads group to add your own suggestions.