[markhelo]

I don't remember her name but I once met an experienced market researcher about 10 years ago who worked for Lego in the 80's and 90's to study their users and figure out how to grow the company. She basically went on to explain the complete strategy that you still see them executing. Lego identified that at the core, there are 4 different needs. 1. Kids who like to imagine and create characters on their own and build Legos they can play with. This is typically at an early age. Hence the generic sets around trains, cars, dollhouses, etc. 2. Kids who love their favorite characters and play with them - hence Lego did partnerships with Marvel, StarWars, Disney, etc. 3. Kids who like to display their work with pride, build it once and never touch it again - hence the architecture series. 4. Kids who like to build and rebuild different things from the same set - hence Lego technic.

She used Kids to mean not just by age but anyone who is a kid at heart :) After hearing it, I can't unsee it in a Lego store and am always amazed at the genius of doing market research. We have glorified these things in startups, but when done properly it helps any company.