Due to their compatibility, the possibilities are much more expansive than their competitors’ who enter the market with only a few hundred building pieces.Īdherence to the LEGO unit puts full creativity into the hands of builders. Every year the company produces a few new parts, which are added to the family of building elements. There are thousands of LEGO elements all consistent with the LEGO Unit. They were just as valuable 50 years ago as they will be 50 years from now. As a result, LEGO products rarely show up in a thrift store because they don’t lose their value. The first LEGO bricks made in 1958 were consistent with the LEGO Unit, meaning they fit with the bricks made today. Respect for and adherence to the LEGO Unit has given LEGO elements their timelessness and the company its competitive advantage. Thus, the scoop will naturally fit into anything a LEGO stud could. Why is this so important? When it’s time for a LEGO designer to create a new element, like a pile of four ice cream scoops, it’s pretty clear what the diameter of each ice cream scoop should be – 3 LU. For example, the height of all LEGO studs is 1 LU, the diameter of all studs is 3 LU, the width of 1 x _ elements is 5 LU, the height of bricks is 6 LU, the height of plates is 2 LU, and so on. As much as possible, the dimensions on each LEGO element are integer-multiples of the LEGO Unit or clean fractions of it. What enables LEGO’s obvious and non-obvious modularity is the deliberate choice of, and adherence to, a prescribed geometric basis – the LEGO Unit (LU). Further, the scoops are at just the right height to be integrated fully into the building system. The LEGO Group’s non-obvious modularity allows the ice cream scoops to be lined up such that their top scoops act like studs (See figure). To illustrate this, consider the four-scoop ice cream-an element of the LEGO ice cream cone. This is what allows creative people everywhere to assemble LEGO bricks in ways the company never anticipated. Perhaps more important than the modularity just described is the non-obvious modularity. As we all know, this kind of modular building brick means that all architectural styles, all types of vehicles, and all kinds of objects can be modeled at some level with LEGO.
It is what makes LEGO bricks interesting at a basic level that appeals to all ages in every culture.
This obvious modularity was anticipated by Christiansen, and was the genesis of the play system idea. Ignoring basic color combinations there are 915,103,765 ways to assemble six 2x4 LEGO bricks together. First, there is the obvious modularity – the millions of ways to assemble a set of bricks using the stud and tube interface (See Figure).
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