Six years ago, the biggest thing Danish toy-maker Lego had constructed was a pile of debt. The family business, whose name comes from the Danish for “play well” was doing anything but — it was innovating, but its new products were underperforming.
Lego’s founding family appointed former McKinseyite Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, who has brought the company back into the black with a systematic, sometimes painful change programme begun in in 2004.