Linda Hill
Wallace Brett Donham Professor, Harvard Business School | Author, Genius at Scale & Collective Genius | Top Thinkers50 Management Thinker | Leadership & Innovation Expert
David Robertson
Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan | Former LEGO Professor of Innovation, IMD Switzerland | Author, Brick by Brick and The Power of Little Ideas
David Robertson holds a singular credential in the innovation world: he was literally the LEGO Professor. As Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan and award-winning author of Brick by Brick, he has spent 30 years studying how companies innovate around existing brands and products. His keynotes translate LEGO's extraordinary turnaround into a practical framework any organization can apply.
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David Robertson biography
David Robertson carries a credential that no other innovation speaker in the world can claim: he was the LEGO Professor. From 2002 to 2010, Robertson held the endowed Chair of Innovation and Technology Management at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, a position titled in honor of the LEGO Group, which granted him unprecedented access to the company’s leadership through one of the most dramatic corporate turnarounds of the past 30 years. That access produced the research, the case studies, and ultimately the book that made Robertson one of the most sought-after voices on innovation strategy for established brands and products.
Innovation speaker David Robertson is currently a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, where he teaches product development and digital product management and runs the school’s largest and highest-rated executive program, the Executive Program in General Management. He also leads MIT’s executive education course “Innovating in Existing Markets: Reviving Mature Products and Services,” which draws senior leaders from across industries seeking rigorous frameworks for a problem most innovation curricula ignore: how to grow when your product is already successful and your market is already crowded.
The LEGO Turnaround and the Innovation Framework Behind It
Robertson’s research into LEGO’s near-bankruptcy and spectacular recovery produced Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry (Crown, 2013), co-authored with Bill Breen. The book was named a Best Book of the Year by both Fortune and Strategy+Business, and its central finding overturned a generation of innovation orthodoxy. LEGO had followed every piece of mainstream innovation advice available: blue ocean strategy, disruptive innovation, open innovation, full-spectrum innovation. Each initiative pushed the company closer to collapse. Recovery came not from thinking further outside the box, but from building a disciplined system for innovating around the core product, a methodology Robertson codified and extended in his second book, The Power of Little Ideas: A Low-Risk, High-Reward Approach to Innovation (Harvard Business School Press, 2017). LEGO’s post-turnaround results, 22% annual sales growth and 38% profit growth for six consecutive years, remain one of the most striking performance records in the toy industry’s history.
Before his academic career, Robertson spent five years at McKinsey, where he led the firm’s global Product Development Practice, and served as a senior executive including CEO at four enterprise software companies and two consumer product startups. He holds an MBA and PhD from MIT and a BS from the University of Illinois, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
As a speaker, David Robertson is known for keynotes that combine intellectual rigor with genuine entertainment, often incorporating LEGO serious play workshops that have become a signature experience for corporate audiences at organizations including Merck, Purolator, and Fortune 1000 companies across multiple sectors. His presentations challenge audiences to rethink the assumptions behind how innovation is structured, resourced, and measured in their own organizations.
David Robertson Speaking Videos
David Robertson - Innovating Around the Box
David Robertson - What If a Great Product Isn't Enough?
David Robertson Keynote Topics
In 2003, LEGO followed every piece of mainstream innovation advice and nearly went bankrupt. Its recovery came from a framework most organizations have never been taught. Drawing on his award-winning book and eight years of direct access to LEGO's management team as the LEGO Professor at IMD, Robertson walks audiences through the specific decisions, structures, and management disciplines that transformed LEGO from a struggling toy company into the most profitable brand in the toy industry. Every lesson is transferable, and Robertson shows audiences exactly how to apply them to their own products, categories, and competitive contexts.
Breakthrough disruption is rare, expensive, and more often fatal than transformative for established organizations. The high-reward innovation strategy available to almost every company is not disruptive at all: it is a disciplined system of complementary innovations built around an existing core offering. Drawing on his Harvard Business School Press book and research across companies including Gatorade, Novo Nordisk, Wegman's, and LEGO, Robertson shows how organizations can build innovation ecosystems that make their core product or service increasingly compelling without betting the company on a moonshot.
Based on his MIT executive education course and consulting work across Fortune 1000 companies, Robertson addresses the innovation problem most strategy curricula ignore: how to grow, differentiate, and win when you already have a mature product and a competitive market. This keynote delivers a structured methodology for identifying where complementary innovations will have the highest impact, how to build the organizational capabilities to execute them consistently, and how to measure innovation performance in ways that drive the right behaviors across a portfolio.
Available as an extended keynote or multi-day workshop, this session uses LEGO Serious Play facilitation techniques to surface organizational assumptions, explore strategic challenges, and generate innovation ideas that verbal-only discussions rarely reach. Robertson has run this program for corporate audiences including Merck and multiple Fortune 1000 organizations, customizing the LEGO builds, minifigures, and prompts to each organization's specific context. Participants consistently describe it as the most memorable and productive innovation session they have experienced.
Managers are constantly inundated with theories on how to drive innovation—each promising growth and profitability. Yet, in practice, these strategies often fail to deliver meaningful results. MIT innovation expert David Robertson offers a different perspective, drawing from one of the most remarkable business turnarounds in modern history: LEGO’s comeback from near bankruptcy.
In 2003, LEGO was on the brink of collapse. The company’s leaders had followed widely accepted innovation principles—such as pursuing blue ocean strategy, disruptive innovation, open innovation, and full-spectrum innovation—but instead of success, they found themselves facing financial ruin. Ironically, challenging designers to “think outside the box” almost destroyed the company.
LEGO’s revival came through a radical restructuring of its innovation management system. By adopting a more disciplined, strategic approach to innovation—balancing creativity with clear processes—LEGO transformed into the fastest-growing and most profitable company in the toy industry, achieving 22% annual sales growth and 38% profit growth for six consecutive years.
In this engaging keynote, Robertson reveals the secrets behind LEGO’s success and how companies can apply these lessons to their own innovation strategies. He outlines the essential “bricks” of an effective innovation system—including the right processes, tools, roles, and policies—to help organizations foster sustainable growth.
This talk also features Robertson’s famous “duck test”—an interactive, hands-on exercise that challenges audiences to think innovatively with limited resources. By the end of the session, attendees will walk away with a proven, practical framework for managing innovation, ensuring that creativity drives business success rather than chaos.
Speaker topics
FAQs on Booking David Robertson
Why David Robertson?
Booking David Robertson for your event means bringing one of the world's most authoritative voices on practical, evidence-based innovation to your audience. His combination of credentials is genuinely unique: five years at McKinsey leading global product development, CEO experience in both software and consumer products, eight years as the LEGO Professor at IMD, seven years as a Professor of Practice at Wharton, and a current role running MIT Sloan's largest executive education program. His keynotes are built on 30 years of research and direct experience, not a single case study recycled indefinitely. And unlike many innovation speakers, Robertson focuses on the innovation challenge that affects most organizations most of the time: how to grow and compete when you already have a product and customers. Contact Aurum Speakers Bureau to discuss availability and booking.
What is the central lesson from the LEGO turnaround?
The central lesson Robertson draws from LEGO's turnaround is counterintuitive and directly challenges popular innovation doctrine. Between 2000 and 2003, LEGO pursued every fashionable innovation strategy available and nearly went bankrupt. The company's recovery came from a radical reversal: instead of pursuing disruptive, blue-ocean, or full-spectrum innovation, LEGO focused on building a disciplined system of complementary innovations around its core product. New themes, licensing agreements, retail experiences, digital extensions, and community platforms all reinforced the central LEGO brick rather than replacing it. The resulting system generated 22% annual sales growth and 38% annual profit growth for six consecutive years, making LEGO one of the most profitable companies in the toy industry.
What is the "Power of Little Ideas" concept?
The Power of Little Ideas is the framework Robertson developed from his LEGO research and extended in his 2017 Harvard Business School Press book of the same name. The core argument is that most organizations are poorly equipped for the most common and valuable form of innovation available to them: building complementary products, services, and experiences around an existing core offering. Rather than betting on breakthrough disruption, Robertson shows how companies like Gatorade, Wegman's, Novo Nordisk, Victoria's Secret, and LEGO built dominant market positions by systematically innovating around the box, making their central product or service increasingly irresistible through an ecosystem of well-designed complements.
What topics does innovation speaker David Robertson cover in his keynotes?
Robertson's keynotes address innovation strategy for established brands and products, the lessons of the LEGO turnaround and what they mean for other industries, the Power of Little Ideas framework for low-risk high-reward innovation, product development and platform strategy, digital product management, and the design of innovation management systems that balance creativity with discipline. His programs can include interactive LEGO serious play workshops tailored to each organization's specific innovation challenges. For event inquiries and topic customization, contact Aurum Speakers Bureau.
How to book David Robertson as a keynote speaker?
Aurum Speakers Bureau can help you book David Robertson as a speaker for your next event, conference, or board meeting. Simply fill out our contact form to inquire about David Robertson's availability for a speaking engagement. One of our booking agents will respond to your request immediately and contact the speaker to let them know you want to hire them. We will assist you with obtaining speaking fees, booking information, and confirming availability for David Robertson or any other top keynote speaker or celebrity of your choice.
How much is David Robertson speaking fee?
David Robertson speaking fees are determined by several factors, including the event's date, whether it's a virtual or in-person event, the duration, format, preparation required for their speech, and more. The same applies to the cost to hire any other top expert speakers and celebrities. The Speaker Fee Range listed on our website is simply a guideline and is subject to change without notice. If you would like to hire David Robertson to deliver a keynote speech for your event, please fill out the contact form or email us at info@aurumbureau.com with as much detail as possible. One of our experienced agents will get in touch with you and let you know exactly how much it will cost to book David Robertson.
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Can I book David Robertson for a virtual keynote?
Yes, David Robertson is available for virtual keynotes and webinars. To book David Robertson for a virtual event, please complete the contact form or send us an email to inquire about the special fees for virtual engagements.
