THE BEGINNING OF BIONICLE

HE BEGINNING OF WHAT BECAME BIONICLE PREELUDE:

I got the job as a model builder for LEGO Technic in 1981 and the first LEGO Technic models has hit the market only 3 years prior to this. I managed to work for LEGO in 23 years in total. In the following next 2-3 years from my start, I grew in the ranks and became a team leader for a small group and took over the task of developing the LEGO Technic system for the LEGO company. The sales of LEGO Technic grew quite successful in the next 10 years from the 1985 to the 1995. My team also grew to a staff of nearly 20 members.

I had ambitions of making the LEGO Technic program a much bigger success. However, the model assortment of cars, trucks, planes & motorbikes was beginning to reach its limits in the shops and the model types was also beginning to repeat it selves. My marketing colleges at the time was supporting me mostly if I kept my ideas within the framework of how it has all started. At one point I experimented with a LEGO outdoor concept but it was never launched. One of the ideas in 1985 was to put 4 rotors on a cross shaped model and try to let it fly! It flew but was on-controllable. I was right but too early. Those we know today as drones. However, when I tried to make a series inside the LEGO Technic program that was more like a play theme and added the LEGO Technic action man to what became the Polar theme in 1986, marketing accepted it but did not put extra efforts behind it so it became a mediocre success and I did not pursue this idea any further. Going forward into the 1990`s it was my creativity and ability to form and visualize what could become possible, that drove the team and I had the privilege to be the architect of how the concepts evolved into new territories and later became cash cows for the LEGO company.

My involvement did not only limite to the component designs, model concepts and marketing ideas. No, I also experimented with ways to facilitate the team and how to recruit international resources and skills to the process. Based on this vision and my willingness to use unconventional methods and thus go under the radar of my superiors, I was able work together with international universities in Valencia and Milan and to establish the first freelance/skunk teams in Milan and in Newcastle UK. With Andrew Nagle as the leader of the 3 man team there. My vision was to create an R&D team that was divers in culture, nationalities, gender, sexual preferences, age, etc. This meant that the way my predecessors who only recruited locally lead, was history.

LEGO TECHNIC COMPETITION 1998. With selected members of my team, I made a one-day workshop of campus, where we developed a tool to identify kids as having different needs depending on their characters and temperaments. It became a concrete intellectual-psychological development tool. We began to have a language for a predominant systematic kid type, an artistic-creative kid type, a linguistic kid type and a physical action-oriented kid type. Not sure that the top management could see the benefit in these actions at the time. Separate from this I conducted a design exercise to make models with different moods and expressions. Since till now all models was just strait forward bright colored model designs of trucks, planes, cars and motorbikes etc. So, the team was asked to make 6 different themes, out of the same basic dune buggy car, but in different colors, moods and very expressive designs. So, one came out with Khaki dessert colors and chains and blade saws looking like taken out of a MAD MAX movie, another was totally black and more like from a sinister batman villain world, another one was multi colored like an avantgarde art of circus mood, one was red with fire coming out of exhaust pipes, another one was white and with belts in the rear as if belonging to a polar world. I remember to have said to the marketing colleagues when showing these at the yearly input meeting. From now on when you have seen this, the LEGO Technic will never be the same for you again! This turned out to be right! Although top management at the time had no clue of what this was for? These 2 experiments led to the development of the LEGO TECHNIC Competion line.

This was a focus on catering for the action-oriented kids needs and to make model themes representing two team with opposite color moods. Very different designs than anything previously made. The aim was to make physical game aspects build into the models. Much more like something you could encounter in a video game or action toys. LEGO Technic was trying to become more contemporary. The colorboxes background stage settings of the models, was also new and among the first at LEGO to benefit from the development of the graphic computers. THE COLLECTABLE LEGO TECHNIC LINE: In 1997 I was in the outlook of something more innovative to bring to the LEGO Technic product line. It was not a need coming from the business or marketing department, but more my personal drive and the dream of pushing LEGO forward. At this time I was inspired by my own kids that was in the first grades in school and among the kids there was emerging several product lines from competitive toy companies that was focused on making business success by becoming a so called craze. It was Pokemon from Nintendo, it was Bayblades, it was Gormity from Giogi Prezioci, POGS and Go-go`s plus more. These products became quickly very popular among the children in our local community and around the world. The question for me was, how can LEGO use some of these mechanics to create a new success? And is it possible to make from my LEGO Technic platform, that I was responsible for? I analyzed the ingrediencies and found that collectability as a phenomenon demands a series of several items at the same price level and in different colors and expressions, It needed a physical action game and the possibility for kids to engage in a competition between each other. It needed a form of currency that the kids could win/loose or exchange between each other. It needed some kind of packaging that enabled the kids to bring the product to school as a safe container. Based on this I had a clear vision of designing a collectable series from the basis or the LEGO Technic components. That meant that there probably had to be some kind of mechanical technical function on each model, if I should be able to convince our marketing team to agree to a concept. Knowing how religious they where to the original technical LEGO Technic program. My focus was furthermore to use the Kids type tool as a driver for the innovative process. Especially the more action oriented “Bully Bob” type rather than the “Systematic Siegfred” type. So in due time before the annual input to the marketing team, I was able to communicate a clear brief to my “Skunk” team of 3 designers in Newcastle England Led by Andrew Nagle. After a period of sketching and with my gentle guiding, they delivered some rough prototype models to us in Billund Denmark. The prototypes were a blister pack style concept with only 10-12 components inside layed out like an exploded model. One was like a small vehicle including a winch and another was more like a robot character with arms and limbs that could turn from some central placed gear wheels. Marketing was not overenthusiastic at the presentation I did later that month, but on the other hand they did not reject the initiative entirely. Now here it could have stopped and the Bionicle would never have seen the light of day. If I didn’t push the envelope and took some freedoms in the organization, it would just have been an idea on a piece of paper and left hanging there! However since I was also keen on experimenting and improving LEGO`s Innovation process al together and was inspired by the IDEO design consultancy and Stanford university’s innovation methods near San Fransisco, whom I had the privilege to visit. I took the initiative to organize and facilitate a one-day workshop with multiple competence in the form of a young Marco Ilincic sales representative from the international market, Erik Kramer local marketing, Per Hoevsgård technical staff from engineering and production and ofcause designers both from Billund and the UK. Christoffer Raundahl, Martin Christiansen and Andrew Nagle. This of campus workshop led to some key conceptual ideas essential to the product that was about to see the light of day: • One was the flickering game of disks from the robot arm- in the workshop we had a ruler we started flipping cardboard disks from POGS, • One was the idea of a molded container to use as the packaging. (all LEGO units till then was in cardboard boxes) • another was to develop 6-8 sales units at an identical price. • One was the need to develop a ball joint system to make it possible for models to pose. • Acceptance of the fact that each kit could only build one model and not 2 or more like the rest of the LEGO Technic program. • Key was to keep the price low so it could be affordable with kids pocket money and not only something for Christmas and birthdays. • One was to create a world, a story and a graphical scenario where these vehicles and robots could act. • One was that the design look had to be made in an Ion cast look in order to make the plastic molds without expensive “Slides” so price and investment could be kept at a minimum. • There also was ideas of using new and alternative sales channels like, kiosks, gas stations, vending machines and to position the new product line in alternative placements in the shops. This was inspired by some very positive sales results from a progressive sales team in the Nederland’s with small conventional LEGO system kits. • At this stage the model concept was a metamorphosis between vehicles and robots. SLIZER & THROWBOTS: After the workshop I dedicated the project to a small, but enthusiastic inhouse design team within the LEGO Technic group that by now had grown to be more than 25 members. One of the bigger challenges was the limit of only adding 12 new components to the Line. So a lot of effort was to design each component so it looked like something out of the LEGO Technic component range and yet fulfilled the new functions and on top of this gave the coolness factor. Most iconic was the ball joint leg and the head/face components. The disk flipping arm and the decorated and collectable disks was also important markers of the new design language that was born in the making of this model concept. Colors and graphic played an important part as well mostly in order to differentiate the models. I was not satisfied with our container design in the beginning, so I asked Kurt Jensen to try to give it more value for the kids. First of all he added some openings so kids could slide it into their belts, but most importantly was to design it looking like as a big craft, so it could be part of the story and play experience in itself. I remember that I one Monday after working in the weekend, came with the idea of using the elements like Water, Eis, Fire, Air, inspired from our interest and research in personas and kid types. It was Goethes temperaments of Melancholic, Choleric, Phlegmatic, Sanguine etc. that he then linked to the elements that gave me the idea. The work on coming up with the model range designs and themes evolved into 4-5 items that was posable ROBOT like and the rest a bit more vehicle or insectoids. The new concept needed a name and in cooperation with the graphical consultant company “Advance” we named it Slizer in Europe and Throwbots in the US. Christian Faber from Advance was very inspired from the new and very different concept, and he was able to make convincing background environments to each model theme. All adjusted to live in a faraway planet divided into a world of different climate zones with drama and battles. LEGO`s first own Sci-Fi Intellectual Property story, saw the light of day, with a complete graphic illustration, as if it was a movie or a video game. Another thing that was unique in the creation of the Slizer concept, was the work speed. Normally a project at LEGO in those days took 3 years from start to launch. I managed to squize it down to 1 year by working integrated across functions. I recall clearly a time when models and packaging designs was ready and there was an important top management meeting to asses and approve the entire1999 product launches. Here was a newly appointed top manager Christian Maigaard who became very influential in the notion of focus on the core of the LEGO Brand. In a discussion I had with him he almost killed the concept! He was very tempted to stop it right there and he might as well have done so. In he`s eyes this was not what LEGO was about. LEGO should focus on the core creativity coming out of the 8 stud brick! My enthusiasm must eventually have convinced him or at least he led it survive for now, but this was in trueness the 2nd time the concept could have evaporated. This resulted in the go ahead of the launch of Slizer from LEGO Technic. The year after it became apparent that it was a stunning business success creating a turnover of 100.000.000 USD in one year. After this fight against all odds and yet prevailing, I was asked to leave my team build over 20 years and to take over the much bigger core team in LEGO`s R&D of more than 80 individuals. At this time LEGO was facing one of its worst economic crises, despite the success of the Slizer products. The core LEGO business was sinking. It was here that I got/took the power to revolutionize the entire way the workforce in the innovation process was operating. From a line organization with each function in its own departemental building physically divided, I merged all functions together in one building and implemented cross functional project groups instead. This became an important cornerstone in LEGO`s survival and later gigantic business success. So when I leave my beloved LEGO Technic team and now in full swing of making the follow up named Robo-Riders, we get the insights from the US marked that the success of the SLIZER is not because its becomming a Craze! Its not becoming a school yard collectable concept, but its instead a very desirable cool action figure concept! Later named Constraction figures! What I set out to do was not accomplished, but something more sustainable and important was discovered instead. My learning from this was, that innovations most important ingredient is the willingness to brake conventions and persistency to fight for it! LEGO`s own ability to make its own universes and IP`s in a contemporary way that really got the kids interest. From here my work concentrates on implementing the Star Wars and the Harry Potter IP concepts into the core LEGO System block. This is now history as well and of cause a gigantic success of the LEGO Company`s business endeavor. My involvement in this is another story and an even bigger turn around than Slizer was. However the work and the methodes I evolved in that year where we created Slizer became foundation of what I was able to do for the entire LEGO Group and pivotal for the way LEGO`s innovation works today. 2 years later I was asked to take over the entire LEGO R&D leadership that by then counts more than 200 members. In the meantime, my colleagues have evolved the Slizer start up success, to an even greater success by making the Bionicle series with all its additional ingredients! My role on Bionicle by then was merely to maintain and boost the strong team around it! However had I not had the initial vision and stamina? It would never have emerged. 1 years Later in 2003 I was fired from the LEGO Company!