Chief Digital & Technology Officer, The LEGO Group (LEGO A/S)
LEGO’s Digital Transformation: CDTO Atul Bhardwaj on Digitizing the Toy Brick | Technovation 610
In this interview, Atul Bhardwaj, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Technology Officer of LEGO, speaks with Peter High about the digital transformation of the iconic and well-known toy company. Atul provides an overview of his post as Chief Digital and Technology Officer for LEGO and explains how LEGO is integrating digital into its product offerings. He describes the various ways digital experiences differ between adult and children customers, how LEGO works together and keeps pace with the digital transformation of partners within its ecosystem, and how LEGO is digitizing the in...
Transcript (24 segments)
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Peter High0:00
Welcome to Technovation. I'm your host Peter High. I'm pleased to welcome Atul Bhardwaj to the broadcast. Atul is the Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Technology Officer of the LEGO Group, a company with about nine billion dollars in annual revenue. That is the founder and operator, the developer I should say, of the iconic bricks that so many of us played with as children and many still as adults as well. It's a role that he's held for roughly a year now. He's run supply chain and or technology at companies such as Media Markt Saturn and Tesco. He was a partner at Accenture prior to his time in industry, and he's lived in many countries and worked in many countries around the world. I'm looking forward to discussing with him not only his current post but also his career as an international citizen of sorts and the lessons that he's drawn from such a diverse set of experiences that he brings now to the LEGO Group. Atul, it's great to speak with you today. Thank you so much for joining me.
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Atul Bhardwaj0:58
Oh Peter, it's an absolute pleasure to be here with you today. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. Thank you so much.
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Peter High1:04
Well, let's begin with your role if we could. I mentioned you were the Executive Vice President, Chief Digital and Technology Officer of the LEGO Group. I also mentioned, as soon as at least for me as I hear the word LEGO, I think of playing with these bricks with my sons, building buildings, building vehicles, and being down on the carpet of our living room and sort of building together. I see in your background, for those who are listening they won't see this, but I see some things that you have built as you mentioned with your family, including the Roman Colosseum and even what looks from a little bit of a distance like almost a painting of John Lennon. So many different things that LEGOs can be used for. But talk for you if you would for a moment about your role as Chief Digital and Technology Officer in an organization like this.
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Atul Bhardwaj1:54
Well yes, thank you Peter. I'm delighted to. I joined the business about nine months ago now, so I'm still relatively new to the LEGO Group. But I joined the business because the LEGO Group, which has been a very successful business anchored in the physical brick, has decided to embark strategically on a digital transformation. It's a big part of our strategy to really embrace digital, both in terms of embracing in the play experience, how to bring the physical and the digital together as a play experience, but also into how do our shoppers who shop with us and are increasingly using digital as a mechanism shop with us, how do we then service their needs, how do we work with our partners who sell for us who are increasingly becoming more and more digital, how do we make sure we service their needs, and also the colleagues that work with us in our stores, in our factories, in our head office, how do we make sure that we are increasingly digitizing their experiences that they have with us. So my role as a Chief Digital and Technology Officer is to really provide some shape to that transformation strategy that we have, to start to execute on it, to help us develop the digital products that we want to build both in the play experience that we're thinking about but also in the experience that our shoppers and our colleagues and our partners have as they interact with us. And so I'm here to help develop the products. As part of that, I look after the technology team, so one of my big roles is to really take our technology teams from kind of an IT organization into a modern technology organization. What does that mean in terms of skill sets, in terms of tooling, in terms of capabilities that we need to have in order to service the need for our digital transformation. So the role is as much about making sure we define the right product strategies, the right digital product strategies that we need to build, but also around making sure we build them the right way so they're scalable, so we can operate them, so they're instrumented, and we have the right technology skills in our organization to service those needs. So it's really quite a broad role and really quite an exciting journey that we're on.
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Peter High4:14
It certainly sounds it. I'd love to cover several of the topics you raised there in a little bit more depth if you don't mind at all. So you talked about the digital components of the products themselves and some ways in which you can enrich the experience and by extension join customers in the digital realm. So many of them becoming especially digital natives among your customer set, which will only be a growing subset of your customer base from this point forward. Everyone will be a digital native. Talk a bit about some of the ways in which that's brought to life. Are there some examples that you can provide there?
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Atul Bhardwaj4:52
Yeah, I mean we have some examples of products today. Like Super Mario, like Mindstorms, these are examples of products that bring together a physical experience with a digital experience. That's really kind of the journey we're on. I mean we are anchored in the brick. What makes our core DNA is that physical experience. Our DNA and mission statement is all about helping children learn through play, and we need to make sure that that play experience allows children to learn, allows children to grow, allows children to build. And we recognize that in the world that we operate in today, more and more children are interacting more and more with digital, and therefore we do need to then figure out how we can keep to our core which is that play and that build experience but enable it, enhance it with some digital experiences. So Super Mario, Mindstorms are examples of the kind of things that we're looking to do, and there'll be more of that as our teams figure out that play experience that blends that physical and that digital in new and exciting ways.
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Peter High6:08
That's very interesting. And you call out that of course so many of us, myself included, were introduced to your products as children and many continue to use them whether adults without children or adults playing with their children. Different from most organizations like yours, you have a solid block of children who are your customers as well as adults who are your customers, and many in some cases adults who are buying for their children. Needless to say, as you think about the digital experience for a child relative to the digital experience for an adult, how do you think about some of the differences between those and how best to interact with each?
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Atul Bhardwaj6:43
Each one of those personas does have different needs and different requirements. We have teams that do a lot of research into how do we service the needs of children, which tends to be a little bit more gaming, a little bit more social, and also adults which tends to be a bit more around physical build versus digital build. How do you take a physical build and then think about adding some coding to it so it can change its behavior? These are the kind of things that we're looking to try and bring together. And they have different needs and there are different personas that we're trying to solve for, so it is fairly complicated. But there's a lot of work that we do to research into what would work for smaller children through the Duplo, what will work for boys and girls, what would that look like, what would work for adults. So there's lots of research that goes into these products, and each one of these products will have a different digital dimension to them as we work this out.
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Peter High7:53
And you also mentioned there's a great number of partners, as with any organization of a certain size, certainly one as large as yours, a great number of partners that you interact with themselves going through great digital transformations as well. And so in order to work in concert with them and as effectively as possible, it's also important that you're keeping up with the pace that your partners are in their digital journeys as well. Talk a bit about that kind of ecosystem if you will, and the way in which you think about your own digital transformation blending with those partners that you've developed as they're on their own journeys.
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Atul Bhardwaj8:28
Yeah, the reality is our world is changing so fast. To some extent the pandemic has accelerated our use of digital. We think about this meeting that we're having today, it's over a digital medium. We think about the way we watch movies, the way we shop, the way we listen to music, how it's now so different to what it was maybe 10 years ago. The reality is the world is changing so fast. Our shoppers that shop with us are increasingly shopping with us through more digital medium than through walking into our stores through physical medium. Last year alone we almost doubled the number of interactions with our website, and we had 250 million different visits to our site. That's incredible growth for us. So we see that our shoppers are shopping differently. We see that our partners are increasingly becoming more and more digital. The partners that sell for us want to have a digital interaction with us, they want to work more with us seamlessly, and increasingly they're selling through their own digital channels as much as their physical channels. We have a retail business that needs to become more and more connected through our website and our stores. So for me, a large part of our journey is about that interaction with us. That interface with us is increasingly becoming more and more digital, and that's why we're trying to build out the experiences that we believe our shoppers and our partners would want to have with us, which is delightful, seamless, and more digitally enabled.
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Peter High10:19
One of the things I find very exciting about your role, which is very apparent to anyone who's listening to this Atul, is that you have a profound external lens to the work that you're doing. You talked about the way in which you get involved in the digital products and the digital interactions with customers. You talked about just a moment ago the various partners who are members of your ecosystem and the ways in which you interact with them as well, the very fundamental ways in which from a digital perspective you're doing that. You also have an internal lens to the work that you're doing, needless to say, in terms of modernizing the practices of an iconic organization, digitizing the internal operation and so on. I wonder if you could linger a moment and talk a bit about some of the current work that you and team are doing to digitize the internal aspects of the company as well.
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Atul Bhardwaj11:12
Yeah, that's a big part of our portfolio. We talk about the different user groups that we're trying to solve for. We have our consumers that experience our products and they build with us, and they're increasingly having that physical digital experiences. How do we then solve for that? We've talked about our shoppers that buy from us, how do we then make that a more digital experience for them? Our partners that sell for us, how do we work with them in a much more digital way? And then we have our colleagues that work with us in our stores, in our factories, in our head office, and increasingly they would want a more digital experience. So how do we have a consumer-grade colleague experience for everyone that comes and works with us in our stores, factories, or head offices? That's the journey that we're on, building that awesome experience for our colleagues so they can really become focused on the task in hand because all of the data and all of the systems that they need to do their job just work and work seamlessly. That's a big part of our journey as well. So our transformation really is trying to solve for those four user groups: the consumers, the shoppers, the partners, and our colleagues. That's the journey we're on.
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Peter High12:32
You also have an advantage as a technologist. There are peers of yours who run technology or digital for organizations where one's colleagues can't be users of the product, so let's say some esoteric business-to-business organization for instance. I would imagine, and certainly would validate the hypothesis with you, that a great number of people who choose to join your team currently or in the past were in fact interact with the products that you are building and selling, and perhaps there's a bit of a passion for LEGO even before joining the company as well. First of all, is that true? And secondly, what role does that play as you think about building your team, a very international team at that?
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Atul Bhardwaj13:14
Yeah, it plays a really important role. We do have a very, very strong brand because it's anchored in helping children learn through play. A lot of colleagues that join my team are fans of LEGO. They've all experienced LEGO, they play with it. I'm a big fan, as you can see from my background here, I have a lot of LEGO and I built LEGO both myself and with my children. So a lot of people who come and join us are massive fans of the play experience and are very excited about how we can improve that, how we can make it better, how we can using new and modern digital technologies really innovate not only on the experience but also on the interaction that our consumer, shoppers, partners, and colleagues have with technology. So we're very excited because we are building out a lot of our digital talent. We are doubling down in our centers in London, in Denmark, and Shanghai. We also have centers in the US and Hungary which are very important to us. But we are looking to now invest in all those centers to build capability and to hire talent. I'm super excited that as we go out and talk to the industry about what we're trying to do, we have a lot of excitement and interest from colleagues wanting to come and join us and help us in the journey that we're on. So the business and the products that we make really help.
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Peter High14:50
And so you started to talk about this vast team that you have. The sun never sets on the digital team within LEGO given how it is distributed. Talk a bit about how you manage that team and the extent to which you have areas of focus, let's say in Shanghai different from London different from Copenhagen or Billund, Denmark, or the US or Hungary, some of the other places that you mentioned. How do you think about where you are growing talent and why, and is there differentiation based upon the location?
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Atul Bhardwaj15:34
I guess the way I think about this is that the world is going on a digital transformation. Most organizations have some form of a digital transformation journey enabled by digital, and so we're all kind of fishing for the same talent. Therefore we have to leverage the strength of our brand. We have to think about the locations that we want to double down in so that we're actually fishing in a bigger pond for the same talent. But more importantly, there is only one language of code. The point that ties us all together is the language of code. So for me, I'm looking to build a global organization where we can put products in each one of these locations. I'm looking to hire great engineers, great agile coaches, great technical program managers, great data analysts so that we can then start to think about building some of these products in any of these locations for the globe, because that's where we want to try and get to. So the way I see this is that we need to go where the talent is and we need to hire the talent to do awesome work based on where the talent is. What ties us together is the fact that there is only one language of code, and because of that we can all work consistently together to try and solve some of the problems we have to solve.
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Peter High17:03
That's a really fascinating insight. It's one of those great insights frankly that once I hear you say it, it is obvious, and yet I've not heard many people refer to that very point as well. I wanted to ask you actually a related point. I mentioned at the outset you've worked in a very diverse array of countries and continents. You've worked in Denmark where you are now, Germany, the UK, Hong Kong, you've had time in the US as well among many other places. And it's interesting. I would imagine on the one hand being a citizen of the globe as you have professionally must make you much more attuned than the average person as to the cultural nuances of the places that you are entering and working in. But also I find it very interesting that you operate in a medium in technology and this digital evolution and revolution that's happening in so many places that does have this sort of tie that binds. You talk about how code is actually something that is a common factor that perhaps cuts through some of those differences as well. I'd love to have you, if you don't mind, reflect a little bit on that: the cultural nuances and the advantages of having worked in so many different places while also maybe doubling down on this very important point that you make about the common features you have found that act as these ties that bind across a very diverse organization like yours.
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Atul Bhardwaj18:34
Yeah, look, I think I've been very lucky to experience a lot of different cultures, and it brings a richness to how you try and solve problems. It brings lots of different perspectives to how you're trying to solve problems. There's a lot of experiences. But there is that common binding point that when it comes to technology architecture and technology coding, it's a very common language. As I walked into some of the projects I was doing in Hong Kong versus some of the projects I was doing in the USA, the actual conversations around the how were very, very similar. So I think the different cultures, the different environments just bring an extra richness to the whole thing, and it's awesome to have experienced it all. But the reality is underneath all of that, we are trying to solve the same problems and we are trying to solve it in very similar ways. There's a lot you can learn from the different cultures in terms of how you approach problems, but I think there's a lot of similarities there.
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Peter High19:45
Yeah, it's an interesting and profound insight. I really appreciate you sharing that. I know that at a time when so many people around the world are thinking now about the necessity and in fact the advantages of building diverse teams, of thinking about diversity and inclusion in building out teams, that this is a topic that you've also spent a lot of time thinking about. I wonder if you wouldn't mind taking a moment and reflecting upon that as well, and ways in which you foster some of that diversity and inclusion in your own teams.
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Atul Bhardwaj20:20
It's a super important topic. As an organization, diversity and inclusion is a big part of our DNA. It's a big part of the way we operate and the way we'd like to operate. We have a huge program to help us understand our unconscious bias, which is the big thing that we're looking to understand and how we then face into that. What does that mean? How do we face into that and how do we try and really push the D&I agenda? It's very important to me. I'm the executive sponsor for our LGBTQ+ community that we have. We have a lot of communities where as executives we sponsor and we actively participate in so we can try and encourage an open debate around some of the potential barriers that exist to be diverse. But it's a constant dialogue and a constant conversation that we're having. I think as a technologist, it tends to be a bit more tricky to really be diverse in technology organizations, particularly in deep tech. But there's lots of communities out there which encourage the different diverse groups to code, to talk about how we can encourage those groups to become part of our family. So it's something that we're constantly working on and something that we're constantly looking at, particularly as we are hiring a lot of talent. The one thing that we're constantly looking at is how do we make sure we do that with a significant D&I lens. So it's a really important topic for us, and we are constantly talking about it, understanding it, trying to figure out how we can do things differently to move the dial and move it significantly.
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Peter High22:18
Great points all. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective on that. I wanted to also ask you, as you look to the future, what trends particularly excite you as somebody who is so immersed and has been for so long in a variety of iconic brands, in addition to serving many iconic brands as a long-time leader within the consulting space as well. You're somebody who I'm sure in your DNA is constantly has your radar aware of emerging trends that might apply in some interesting and creative ways to an organization, in this case like the one you're now a part of in LEGO. What are some of those trends that particularly excite you as you look to the future?
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Atul Bhardwaj23:00
Yeah, there are so many. I actually think that we're in the midst of what I would call a fourth industrial revolution. Industrial revolutions happen when lots of technology start to intersect and come together, and then suddenly lots of capability becomes available to us and things just transform. If I think about what's intersecting today, we have artificial intelligence, we have 5G, we have augmented reality, we have quantum computing, we have all of these things coming together, and I think that will then enable us to solve problems in new and different ways. So I'm constantly getting excited about the technologies that are coming. What will be here a year from now will be very different to what was here a year ago. There are so many exciting things out there: driverless cars, robotics, I can keep adding to it. All these use cases start to become more and more mainstream a lot faster. So the thing for us is to figure out when do we double down on a particular technology trend. When will robotics become mainstream and we'll start to really use it in our factories? We use it in our factories today quite a lot. When does it become a big part of what we do? What do we do about driverless cars? When does that become a big part of our end-to-end supply chain? Quantum computing, how do we start to embrace that? How do we go really deep into artificial intelligence? We do a lot with machine learning today, but there's a lot more we can do. And then obviously 5G, what does that offer us in terms of that fluid play experience, the bandwidth that we need to really start to build together digitally across many locations? How do we use 5G to help with all of that? So there's lots of exciting things out there which will fundamentally transform the way we operate.
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Peter High25:05
Well, Atul Bhardwaj, thank you so much for joining me on Technovation today, for providing insights from across a remarkable career to date, sharing some of the experiences over the course of the past roughly year in role as the Chief Digital and Technology Officer of LEGO, some of the remarkable things you and your team are doing to digitize your business and to enhance the experience that customers of LEGO might get digitally in addition to the traditional ways in which they interact with LEGO with the iconic brick. It's been a great conversation.
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Atul Bhardwaj25:37
Well, thank you Peter. It's been a pleasure to share some of the work that we're doing. I think we're on a very, very exciting journey here at the LEGO Group. I think most organizations are adopting some form of a digital transformation. It's never been a great time to be a technologist, to be working in technology, because there are so many great innovations and so many great opportunities out there for individuals as a technologist. So super exciting.