Insights into strategic effectiveness

Abstract

Back in 2013, The LEGO Group was in financial chaos, it was losing around €1 million daily and soon faced bankruptcy. To make matters seem worse, its new CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp was only 36 years old, with no previous experience in this role. In contrast and back in 1921, the perfume Chanel 5 was a goose that laid the golden eggs for Coco Chanel. Nobody assumed that a young and inexperienced CEO would revive The LEGO Group, so much so that it would surpass Mattel, Inc. and become the world’s largest toy organisation in sales revenue, and that Chanel would lose ownership of her businesses. These two scenarios may not indicate any resemblance. Both protagonists come from different times, personalities, ages, gender, and industry. Yet, like many other relevant stories, they both had a denominator in common that played a pivotal role in how their results turned out: strategy. Except that one had a good strategy and the other had a bad one.