Rebuilding LEGO | Brick to the Future | 2
Business Wars
Wondery
4.6 • 13.2K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s late 2003 and LEGO’s turnaround strategy has failed. It’s hurtling towards bankruptcy. Its only hope now is a three-man shadow leadership team. And they’re about to learn that the problems at LEGO go way deeper than anyone thought.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Business Wars rebuilding Lego early and ad-free right now. |
| 0:07.6 | Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:15.3 | November 2003, Lego Headquarters, Bill and Denmark. Christmas is closing in, and as board members gather, the sense of crisis inside the company is growing. Six months have passed since Jorgen Wignudstorp warned Lego's leadership that the company is headed for bankruptcy. He thought that he'd be fired. |
| 0:39.3 | Instead, he got promoted to strategic development chief |
| 0:43.3 | and told to find out what's gone wrong at the toy maker. |
| 0:46.3 | Helping him is Yesper Oveson, |
| 0:49.3 | Lego's new chief financial officer. |
| 0:52.3 | Overson spent weeks digging into LEGO's finances to diagnose the issues. |
| 0:57.0 | Now, he's about to present his assessment of the company's finances to the board members, |
| 1:02.0 | including Kiel Kerk Kristyanson, the head of the family that owns Lego. |
| 1:08.0 | Ovison delivers a bleak assessment. Not only is Lego losing around a million |
| 1:13.7 | dollars a day, its procedures and record keeping are so haphazard that the company doesn't even |
| 1:19.8 | know which products make or lose money. For six years, under the guidance of CEO Paul Plogman, |
| 1:26.9 | the company has spent huge sums developing |
| 1:29.2 | innovative new products and opening new Legoland theme parks every two years. |
| 1:34.5 | But with so little financial oversight, it doesn't know which, if any, of these projects are |
| 1:40.3 | working. |
| 1:41.4 | Overson tells the board that he can't understand how Lego ended up in this mess. |
| 1:46.8 | He used to work for Danska Bank, Denmark's largest bank. When he worked there, everyone came to work |
| 1:53.5 | stressed and miserable, but the business made huge profits. At Lego, the company is dying, but |
| 1:59.9 | everyone seems happy. Now, this is a perennial |
| 2:05.3 | lesson we encounter on business wars, good vibes, bad books. It's easy to mistake smiles for success, |
... |
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