Open Source

As of May 1st 2010 LEGO has decided to allow everyone to freely use LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology. Thanks LEGO!

Feel Free to Use, Develop and Pass it on!

Who and how is entitled to use, train, develop with LEGO® Serious Play® methodology? Very simple! Anybody is entitled to – provided that they follow the LEGO Serious Play Open-source guideline (download it below).

LEGO Serious Play Open-source document p. 4 states: “LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® has been made available by the LEGO Group under a Creative Commons licence ‘Attribution Share Alike’: see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/“.

This license means that you are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
• The licensor (LEGO) cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

You need to do this under the following terms:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
• No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

It is as simple as: “1) You use, 2) you develop, 3) you pass it on to anybody else to use under the same terms.“

How do you give credit to LEGO Corporation?

Anybody can do what they like with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® as long as they refer to original LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Open-source document and give exactly the same credit for the next developers. If you are in doubt how to best formulate it, you may just use the sentence:

“This approach/application/technique/model/roadmap/case builds on LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Open-source guideline made available by the LEGO® Group under a Creative Commons licence. Feel free to share and use under the same licence and enjoy playing seriously with bricks!” :-)

When you do that it is important to make a distinction to what is in the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Open Source Guide and what are proprietary materials. E.g. if somebody has created something, which has their original ideas and that they do not allow others to use. If you are in doubt then get in touch with the authors and make sure that you will not violate their rights nor trust.

What if you are looking for a facilitator?

As a client looking for an experienced LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitator to run a workshop or as a professional facilitator or consultant looking for training in order to apply LEGO SERIOUS PLAY to your toolbox, LEGO encourages to search the internet for LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitators within your country. You may also just post your search in the facilitator marketplace here.

What is included in LEGO SERIOUS PLAY Open Source Document?

The core methodology of LSP has been transcribed and made public for people and facilitators looking to benefit from utilising this method. The Open Source document aims to empower and inspire people to become familliar with the LSP method as well as open up the experience to people who previously couldn’t be a part of it.

By sharing the method of LSP, LEGO hopes to will illustrate the “power of thinking through your fingers” enabling individuals to unleash insight, inspiration and imagination, in a practical and direct way. The common language – the bricks – makes everyone equal and allows all opinions and aspects to be heard. The bricks allow people to communicate thoughts and ideas in place of traditional communication methods that can be too restrictive.

Since 20 years, the LEGO® GROUP has supported the rigorous and careful development of three types of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® resources:

• The LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® basic principles and philosophy, upon which everything else is built;
• The LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® materials – sets of specially selected LEGO bricks and pieces;
• The LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® ‘applications’ – detailed roadmaps of different workshops that make use of the principles, the philosophy and the materials;

In the past all three of these were only available to trained and certified consultants. From June 2010 however, the first two of these have been made ‘open source’. This document outlines the basic principles and philosophy, and the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® boxes (large sets of LEGO bricks and pieces) can be found here: purchase bricks.

The document does not include detailed applications, because LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is entering a new phase. New applications will be developed by the international community of users, and may be shared online. In this new phase welcome creative uses of the tools, and innovation in the community.

Download the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY Open Source Document

You may download below. It is a large file (pdf, 37MB) and download may take some time depending on your bandwidth: Download the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY Open Source Brochure here