At TMRE, Westlake held a session titled, “Is LEGO Serious Play the Secret to Unlocking Insights?” LEGO’s Serious Play is a dynamic tool used by Fortune 500 companies to unlock insights and drive innovation. Participants engaged in the method and explored use cases from industry.
The methodology is said to help people become more expressive storytellers by creating external representations of their ideas with LEGO bricks, which reduces personal judgment and encourages openness. Westlake discusses how constraints like limited LEGO pieces actually enhance creativity, similar to how children use imagination to create fantastical builds. He emphasizes the collaborative nature of the approach, where teams work with identical brick sets but create diverse representations of their ideas.
Getting Hands-On with Serious Play
All Things Innovation: We are here on the last day of TMRE 2025, with one of the session presenters, a workshop presenter, Dr. Garret Westlake, Associate Vice Provost of Innovation at Virginia Commonwealth University. Thank you so much for coming on, just talking a little bit about your session and the show. Your session is really fascinating. It’s all about LEGO Serious Play. I’m sure my daughter would love it, by the way. But it’s all about unlocking the secrets to insights, as you put it. Can you just tell us a little bit more about this framework and system?
Garret Westlake: At its core, what it does so nicely is really help people be more expressive. It helps people be better storytellers. I think we’ve been talking about the role that empathy plays, but this takes it to a whole new level. This allows someone to have a couple minutes to think about what they’re going to build with the bricks, and then they build this external example of their ideas that allows them some space from it. And what the research shows us is that if I share my idea with you, I’m worried you’re going to judge me, and you’re going to judge me and my idea. When I make it external, you’re judging this external thing. You’re not judging me as a person. And therefore, I’m able to be way more expressive and open with you because it all lives in this little LEGO build between us.
All Things Innovation: It really pertains to not only insights, but also innovation. Your specialty is innovation. Can you tell us a little bit about that connection between the two, insights and innovation?
Garret Westlake: I think often we have this idea about where do good ideas come from. How do I be more creative? How do I expand my thinking? And some of the work tells us that constraints are really helpful. So there’s always some pushback when you start putting out packets of LEGO bricks and people say, what? You want me to make a new product with this? And they think at first you want them to actually build it out of the LEGO bricks. I’m supposed to build a toaster out of this? No. You’re supposed to use your imagination. And I think that’s what our children do so well. If we give children LEGO bricks, they can make this magical, fantastical something, and it’s how do we tap back into that. And so the play component comes in that when we’re having fun, when we’re playing, when we’re using our imagination, it helps us be more innovative rather than just standing around a whiteboard and saying, OK, who’s got a good idea?
All Things Innovation: It just brings, as you mentioned, interactivity, creativity, connections and building to the ideation process. Using the buzzwords of the show, it is amplifying the unlocking of the insights or the innovation and being partners with your team, to work more collaboratively.
Garret Westlake: It puts everyone on the same page, too. The workshop that we’re going to do here this afternoon, everyone’s given the same package. So they all have the same bricks. And there’s something nice about seeing all the different ways that people can manipulate those to represent different ideas. And so it again brings the team together because everyone is sort of over the initial embarrassment. We all know we’re playing with these colored bricks. We all know we’re going to be doing silly stories to represent that this little gray brick is an elephant and this one is something else. And that community really helps spark innovation.
The Value of Human Play
All Things Innovation: Let’s just take a look at the TMRE show as a whole. Here we are on day three. What are some of your takeaways? And by that I mean, whether it’s from 20,000-feet up or a specific session you’ve seen, what are some of your thoughts?
Garret Westlake: Obviously, I think there’s been a lot of conversation around AI, rightly so. And we see some groups trying to throw the word human around too. We’re AI. We’re human AI.We’re human insights with AI. I’ve really been reflecting while I think that there’s obviously a need to understand and embrace new technologies. But there’s something really human about play.
There’s something really human around sitting across the table with someone while they build with LEGO bricks and having a conversation about that, that to me still feels incredibly powerful. I think perhaps more powerful than certainly where I think AI is right now. And I think that we as people always are going to value that human connection. We’re going to value play with one another. And so I’ve been struck at that contrast between these new tech tools and these new methods and something old school like LEGOs.
Video: All Things Insights interviewed Dr. Garret Westlake, Associate Vice Provost for Innovation at Virginia Commonwealth University, at TMRE 2025.
