Citations › Citation ID: 61

C61. BOOK: David C. Robertson, Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry (Crown, 2013), p. 267-268.

LEGO has gone out of its way to recruit what some call “T-shaped people.” The vertical leg of the T represents expertise in one particular area, while the horizontal bar signals a breadth of knowledge across multiple disciplines. This potent mix of depth and interdisciplinary skills increases the likelihood that T-shaped people will solve wickedly difficult problems, something that LEGO designers encounter all the time. Today, the vast majority of the LEGO Group’s developers share the same depth of competence: they are abundantly creative when it comes to inventing with and for the LEGO brick.

The LEGO Group seeks designers with both a breadth of skills and depth in specific areas.