In 1932 carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen founded his company in Billund, Denmark with the intention of encouraging creative play and ingenuity in children. He started by making stepladders. However the Great Depression forced him into a flexible business model. He changed his focus on the manufacture of toys and created one of the most loved brands.
Christiansen was a progressive thinker and quick to adopt new materials and technologies. In 1947, he became the first company to purchase a plastics injection molding machine in the world. This significantly increased the range of capabilities and options for Lego products. The machine allowed him to explore and create the Lego brick. The bricks were equipped with pegs on top and hollow bottoms that interlocked with each one another, allowing children to create intricate structures that are far greater than the capabilities of the wooden blocks of the past.
The 1950s were a time of expansion for the company. Godtfred Kirk Christiansen’s daughter Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen joined the managerial staff and she began to modernize the company’s manufacturing techniques. The expansion also included the introduction of a dollhouse line and furniture for girls, as well as the first individual figures known as Minifigures. In 1979, the company widened its range of products to include sets with astronaut minifigures as well as rockets. They also introduced spaceships, lunar rovers and spaceships.
In 1990, the company introduced three Model Team sets that were designed for advanced builders. These sets introduced tiny parts such as axles, gears, and levers, as well as the kind of realistic accuracy that was unheard of in the Lego series at the time.
danish entrepreneur adapted the lego business model