Episode 66: Exploring the Toy Industry w/Brendan Boyle
About Brendan Boyle:
Have you ever wondered how your favourite toys end up in your hands? What makes toy companies such as Lego, Hasbro, and Mattel market leaders, and how have products such as Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars stayed evergreen in a highly competitive industry?
My next guest on The One Percent Project is Brendan Boyle. Brendan is a toy inventor, an adjunct professor at Stanford, and the Founder of the IDEO Play Lab. He is also the inventor of the world-famous Jumperoo.
Brendan consults companies about redesigning their organisational behaviour to include space for play and co-authored the award-winning encyclopedia of never-before-seen inventions, The Klutz Book of Inventions.
Listen in to learn Brendan's insights on designing and working in the toy industry, the value of divergent thinking, how Lego & Mattel have kept themselves relevant and much more.
How Lego clicked: the super brand that reinvented itself.
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Key takeaways:
The process of bringing an idea to a final product involves coming up with many ideas, prototyping, and presenting the model for feedback. By carefully listening to feedback, improving the model, and repeating the process, inventors can increase their chances of success in bringing their ideas to life.
Diverging a little longer during the idea generation process can lead to better and more innovative ideas, and then converging on the most promising ones for further experimentation and prototyping. Creative people don't just diverge, they know how to converge on the best ideas. The challenge is to diverge longer and not just converge on the first idea that comes up.
Understanding the history of an industry can be beneficial for personal development and success in that industry. By learning about the struggles and successes of companies in the past, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of the current state of the industry and its potential future directions.
As an entrepreneur, it is important to manage expectations and be prepared for the ups and downs that come with creating and launching a new product. It is crucial to remain optimistic and grateful when something succeeds, but also to recognize that failure is always a possibility. Being able to navigate the rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship requires a certain level of resilience and creative hustle.
Life Lesson: It's important to prioritise and focus on the things that you are passionate about, instead of spreading yourself too thin and trying to excel in everything. It's better to put more effort into the things that you love and enjoy, and not worry too much about the things that you don't care about. This can help you find your path and passion in life more easily.
Brendan’s book recommendations:
In this conversation, he talks about:
00:00 Intro
03:44 How designing a toy is similar to design thinking?
04:44 What is the funnel from idea to sales for a toy?
08:15 How divergent thinking generates better ideas?
09:45 Are toysactual concepts in the world?
11:15 How does the toy industry work?
13:10 Why should you read about the history of your industry?
14:45 How have Lego and Barbie (Mattel) kept themselves relevant?
16:19 Why does a global design firm such as IDEO like to hire T-shaped people?
18:47 What has he learnt as an entrepreneur?
21:22 Three books
22:53 Advice to your younger self?
Transcript:
Brendan: Well, we kind of all know what an inventor is, but I specialise in toys, in coming up with toy ideas, as my team does. The Play Lab has a team of 25 folks working in both toy invention and design for play, both areas. Coming up with toy ideas is interesting. It's very similar to the design thinking process. We want to start with insight. We love when something is inspired. So, we're out there doing what we would call our design research by understanding what kids are doing, understanding what parents are wanting, and really looking for a need, and then turning that need into something that we can brainstorm around or something, we, we'll see a bunch of different needs that will turn into a pattern. And then quickly, we want to prototype. So, the toy inventor's world is seeing something that's interesting, oh, that looks different. And then coming up with ideas around it, and then quickly prototyping it. That can be physical, or digital. It just needs to be tangible, something we can put in front of people for testing.
Pritish: When it goes from idea to the final product, is there a funnel that you have to go through from idea to sales?
Brendan: Yeah. I mean, the perfect funnel would be, boom, you have a great idea. Then you show it to a toy company and they love it, and you go to contract. So that's the perfect funnel, but that doesn't happen and you can't count on that. So, the funnel is to come up with lots of ideas and then decide which ones feel worthwhile, prototyping, and then taking those a little bit further. We have great relationships. Our business model at toy inventors is we have great relationships with all the toy manufacturers, which is like Hasbros of the world. So, we'll go to them with one of our models, and we have a strong enough relationship, so we may go early, sometimes it may be more finished. And they'll give us a, lots of times it's, oh boy, we've already worked on that, or, or, that's not interesting to us. Or it's, you know, the timing's wrong. So, you get a lot of those. We're carefully listening for feedback and then if we get some feedback that feels strong enough, then we'll go improve the model. Then, then repeat that cycle. So as many cycles as you can get, you'll get closer to what seems interesting to them and an invention enough for them to actually go to contract because they have wonderful designers in themselves. But the interesting thing about IDEO is we're looking in all sorts of different areas because we're working across all different industries so we can cross pollinate sometimes, which brings different types of ideas and makes an invention from us, hopefully worth paying a little bit extra on a royalty.
Pritish: You come up with probably hundreds of ideas in a year. So how do you go through that funnel in narrowing down and figuring out these are the ones to work on, these are the ones to pitch. How do you go about that?
Brendan: Yeah. Everyone's trying to figure out the funnel, which is solid, it should be. We should keep re-examining that. But here's, here's a couple tips that we use. So, say when we do a brainstorm, we'll come up with a hundred ideas in the brainstorm. We'll quickly as a team whosoever is in the brainstorm will get to vote on the five ideas that they think are the best or worth pursuing. We'll see. It's not a total democracy, but we'll start to see where the butterflies lie. And then some of the more senior folks on the team might do a little more editing. So, then we'll decide, okay, we had a hundred ideas. We got 10 that look interesting. So let the other 90 fall to the floor. I see too many companies that spend all their time documenting every idea, and that's not as important. What's important is the 10 ideas that you think have some merit. Then push those to what we call kind of a ‘tinker time’ or a little bit of rough and rapid prototyping. What we want is at that point, we want high fidelity thinking, but low fidelity prototyping. And then once you start to prototype those 10, maybe five seem like they have some merit to push further. So, it is that sort of process. To brainstorm, let a bunch fall to the floor, then decide which ones you want to experiment on. Too many companies take one idea out of that brainstorm, then that's the big idea. They're going to push it all the way to the end. And, it's too risky that way. You're investing too much, if someone's already doing it, or it's just like a new idea came up later in the process. So, for us, that's the heart of our process. And then, you know, there's all different levels of models and prototypes as we go forward.
Pritish: An organisation would like to have everybody converge on a single idea, but your thought process is different. Being divergent helps better ideas.
Brendan: Yeah. We call it, and this is from our ideal designer who led our Chicago studio, Neil Stevenson, he calls it the ‘What's for dinner?’ So, imagine you come home and you ask your partner what's for dinner? You do a little brainstorm like chicken, pizza, fish, let's have pizza. So, you diverge for only three ideas and then you quickly converge. So, the challenge isn't converging, uh, especially in a professional organisation. We got so many folks who know how to converge. Anyone who's gone through the education system, you know how to converge. You know how to take a test. You know how to get the answers, you know how to get there. The challenge is to diverge a little bit longer. So, if we diverge on the ‘What's For Dinner?’ example and came up with 30, we might have a much more interesting dinner. The sort of the fallacy, the myth is that creative people are always diverging their heads, always in the stars. At IDEO and Stanford, d.School, we don't believe that at all. We think a creative person knows how to diverge a little bit longer, and then they start to converge. And the way to converge is not, you have to agree on that one idea out of the brainstorm. This is why we'd love to, alright, what are the five, or which ones do we want to experiment and prototype? Then, once we go further and we start to build these little super fun prototypes, whether they're physical, digital, electrical, mechanical, you'll start to see, oh man, that's got traction. Everyone sort of sees something. Then it's easy to converge. Like, oh, let's, let's put some resources on that one.
Pritish: Are toys, real concepts in the world?
Brendan: Well, that's an interesting question. I would argue there was a paper aeroplane before a real aeroplane. I would argue there was a boat before there was a real boat, a toy boat. So, I think a lot of toys predict the future around things. So, there were probably imaginary cell phones before there was a cell phone talking on your walkie, you, did walkie-talkie watch. So yeah, I think toys can be an inspiration. It can go any kind of cycle. It's like a movie can start with a script or it can start with a title or it could start with a book. There are a lot of different ways. But yeah, I think toys are inspirational. I kind of heard that the word toy is derived from the word tools. So, toys are tools for kids to learn, express themselves, and explore.
Pritish: Well, that's brilliant. I have never thought of toys being tools for kids, which they actually are.
Brendan: Yeah. And some are great tools and some are bad tools, just like the tools that we have in our toolbox, right? I'm hoping we're designing good tools, but some are like tools that you only use once. And, boy, that wasn't good, but others you love and cherish. I, always, you know, I ask people, I suspect most people still have their favourite toys for some reason. They may have been able to hang onto it, and that's a wonderful design goal. If you could design something that you would hang onto forever.
Pritish: Can you break down the toy industry as a business? How does that really work, at least in your mind?
Brendan: It's interesting because when I was a kid, we still played with toys till we were 10, 11, 12 years old. And nowadays kids are out of toys sooner because there are so many other things pulling them. There are screens and other things that get them interested. Although we had a TV that was pulling us, we were still interested. You give a kid a walkie-talkie, now. If anyone, if your younger audience knows what that is, they would go, what's this? Give me a cell phone. Or you give a kid an Etch a Sketch, which is a beautiful toy that takes more dexterity. It takes about an eight or nine-year-old to really work Etch a sketch. And now when you're eight or nine, you want an iPad or something, right? Like, oh, there's that. So, the toy industry is constantly trying to stay relevant, trying to reinvent itself, and trying to come up with things that are interesting to kids and parents alike. And they're different age grades: younger, which might be more juvenile products, sort of like zero to one, and then you get toddlers, two to three or one to three years old and, and then three to six is kind of the sweet spot for toys right now. And then other toy companies are trying to hang on to kids as long as possible. Lego's doing a pretty good job with that. Trying to hang on a little bit longer in the physical world. And then the digital toys and things of that nature can overlap in both. What's interesting about the toy industry is that a little company can come up with a big hit, and it's really known by the brand, not the toy company. A lot of people may know Barbie and Hot Wheels, but they might not know it's Mattel or they might not know it's Hasbro. So, there's room for little companies to come in and explode. Twenty-four or twenty-five years ago, Spin Master in Toronto was a tiny little company. There were three guys that came together and now it's a multi-billion dollar Hot Five toy company. So, there's room for that. It's always exciting to see innovation.
Pritish: You've said that it is essential to read about the history of an industry and how that helps your own development within the industry as well as understanding. Can you give some background, like why do you think that history of any industry matters.
Brendan: I think it's kind of a neat secret trait. If you joined an industry, say you joined the toy industry, why not go back and read about the history of it? And I found it fascinating that Parker Brothers in the 1890s or something like that helped to bring Ping Pong over to the United States and became a big hit. And then they had to reinvent the Ping Pong ball because they were flammable and all this kind of stuff. So, it's just sort of interesting and fascinating. Some of the same struggles that we have now, some of these toy companies almost went bankrupt because they bet too big on an idea and then they went in a different way. But in the eighties, Mattel and other companies bet big on the video games and they could have been the big video game companies, but they got too saturated. They had too many folks coming in with different types of video games and the platforms got saturated. So, they got out and then wait five-ten years later and you have different video game players coming in. So, it's interesting to know the history. And it's sort of fascinating. So yeah, I always coach, when I have a student who's really interested in going in and starting a career or whatever it is, I just kind of tap them and say, look, go find some interesting books about that history. And some of the people that you'll read about are still in the industry. You can go and talk to them. It's just something I think if you're going to join, if you're passionate about an area, why not know a little bit about the history too. You'll find it fun and enjoy it more.
Pritish: Brilliant. Any, any books or blogs you would recommend for the toy industry? In the toy industry?
Brendan: I do a daily dose of play on my Instagram and recently I put a picture of my library of all my toy books on there, so you can go to that. And I'm just at, we can put it in the, in the show notes, but I'm not Boyle, Brendan 23, and you can go back a couple weeks and I put a, I put all my toy books together so you can see those.
Pritish: Brilliant. I definitely will check that out. You talked about Lego. Why do you think Lego has been able to keep itself relevant?
Breandan: Well, a couple things, but when you say relevant, one of the brands that really I believe has done one of the best jobs, and I want to come back to Lego, is Barbie. Barbie has stayed amazingly relevant and the head of Barbie design has done a really great job. Right now, the Barbie Dreamhouse is wheelchair accessible, which is awesome. There's a Barbie with prosthetic limbs. There is curvy Barbie, a petite Barbie, tall Barbie, there's Barbie with a hearing aid. It is just that Barbie's making kids see themselves in toys and if they don't see themselves in toys, they feel left out. So, Barbie's been able to be very inclusive. You know, there's Barbie of every skin colour. It is just amazing how relevant Barbie's staying. So, I think that's great. Lego has done a good job with creating their own intellectual property. They were going to, they did super well with Star Wars Legos and things like that, but they're paying someone else. At that time, they were paying Lucas, now they're paying Disney. So, they've created some of their own IP, which allows them to sort of control their own destiny a little bit more. The challenge for Lego, and they're working on this and we've worked on them with this, is that a lot of their toys, a lot of their sets are beautiful. You put them together and then you're done. You kind of put it on the wall and it's a trophy, and they're doing a much better job of being relevant on how to play with the toys. Continue to play, make them more playable. And I'm impressed with what they're doing. And it's a good challenge and we are involved in a little bit of that challenge.
Pritish: Let's talk about IDEO. Why does IDEO like T-shaped people?
Brendan: So, when we call a T-shaped person, let me explain for your audience. We use T-shaped to help describe when we're hiring someone, if they have a t, the I part of the T is a craft. They have a deep craft. And that could be in design research, it could be in computer science, it could be in robotics. But the t across the top means they're interested in design thinking. They're really interested in other disciplines. And basically, for us it means they want to play well with others. If you're just an I shaped person, you're really smart sometimes and a guru, but all you want to do is work on that one thing. We have so many different types of projects happening. We want that T-shaped person, because you're on a team and you need to work well, play well with your other team members. So that's what we mean by a T-shaped person.
Pritish: Over the videos that I watched, the content I read, I saw that you have taken a conscious effort on becoming much fitter and healthier. Is that a conscious lifestyle you've made or it just happened?
Brendan: I think, well, so one, thank you. Years ago, we were doing a project for the North Face. And Todd Spaletto was the president at the time. Great guy. He's over at Dick's Sporting Goods now or at a division of there’s, so that's really amazing. And we were talking about running 10 kilometres,and we didn't want to run 10 kilometres and more and all that like getting ready,and he said, well you should join the 300-club. And I said, what's that, Todd? And he sai, it's just a bunch of us sitting in our faces who want to work out 300 days of the year. You can do anything you want. The thing about exercise, and I always coach people, is to do something that you find fun and, and I used to be quite a bike rider. I knew all about bikes and people would come up to me and they'd say, Brandon, I got these two bikes. It's this model or this model, and which one should I get. And I would say, well, which one has the colour you like more? And they said, well, what would that possibly matter? And I would say, if you like the colour of your bike, you're going to ride it more. Right? You'll be proud of it. So do things that are fun. And then, I think it's the mind-body connection, and people have heard me tell this when I say if you're going to run with me, you have to start slow and then we're going to taper off. Because it's not about, it's just about moving. And for me movement, it's a little bit about moving meditation sometimes when I lose myself in thought on a, on a slow run or something of that nature. So, I think that's important. Just do something you like. It could be steps or it could be whatever. But if you're forcing yourself to do something on a behavioural change, it's probably not going to work.
Pritish: What have you learned as an entrepreneur throughout your career in products and inventing products?
Brendan: As an entrepreneur, it's such a roller coaster ride when you begin. You are so excited. In my world, when you invent something, it's two years before it hits the market, so there are lots of chances for it to drop. So, you'd be a new inventor, and you'd have something, and then right before the Toy Fair, it dropped, and you're sort of holding your head low and telling your friends and your colleagues, oh, I had something in that line, but it just dropped. And you're like, yeah, sure. And then, it’s sort of understanding that it's awesome when it’s there, but realise it, it might not. So, it's sort of smoothing those rollercoasters out a little bit. And then it's also, I'm still incredibly grateful when I see something we worked on hit the market. It still surprises me. It still feels like, hmm, wow, that's great. So, there's no taking it for granted. It’s like, oh, we deserve that, right? Like it is sort of a hustle. It is sort of a creative hustling in a good way.
Pritish: Two things on that. One, I think I wanted to go back to something you had mentioned earlier. One is how do you get the timing right or how do you assess timing for launching a product?
Brendan: Well, launching the product is up to the toy company, so our timing is like, what's the best time to show a concept, so it's not too early or too late. And we sort of understand all of the different toy companies’ timings, so we want to be in there when it's appropriate. But saying that there's no set timing, because sometimes a product drops and a toy company has an instant need and what do you have for us? And things like that. So, it's, it's more like just being ready all the time. And if, if you do have a lull, we spend a lot of time making sure we're organised and efficient. So, when we do have to make stuff, we know where things are. It's interesting. People think creative folks are just like, ah, their place is always a mess and all that. Mm-hmm. I think a really creative studio can be a mess at the end of a creative session, but after that, you can’t take a nasty, you can't take a Formula One car and have a mess in the shop. You need to know where things are if you're going to fix it up. So, there's a lot of effort on that so you're ready and prepared.
Pritish: Do you think people with an OCD can be creative?
Brendan: I don't know about that, but yes. I wouldn't assume not, but I have no experience in that, but I wouldn't assume not. Perhaps so I would love to do a little digging and see the research on that.
Pritish: Three books and why.
Brendan: One is a, the Spare Room by Emily Chang and she's a CEO. It's all about a family manifesto. It's fantastic. She has one daughter, and they had a spare room and it's about 17 different kids they've helped foster and move on to a better life. It's also a great leadership book, which I find just so interesting because she is leading a team of 500, so she has put in a lot of lessons in there, so that's great. The other is My Stroke of Insight. It's about a brain surgeon. She has a stroke and while she's having a stroke she realises what she's doing. And then it's all about her recovery and her insights around this whole process, which was fascinating. And then a third one, I got it in front of me, which is so fun. I just read this one. This is a super book. This is all about Wham-O, and this is by Tim Walsh, who's becoming a good buddy and he's written a couple books in the toy industry, but Wham-O is the one that did the hula hoop and the Frisbee and the Super Bowl, and it's just amazing. It's a lot of goofy. I wrote a book with John Cassidy, the founder of Klutz called the Klutz Book of Inventions, and it's all about these, the concept: to get a brilliant idea, you have to be very close to ridiculous ideas. So, this Wham-O stuff reminds me because it was before us, because we came up with 164, you decide on a brilliant or ridiculous invention. So, we put them in the book.
Pritish: What advice will you give to your younger self?
Brendan: If I could go back to undergrad, at Stanford, I kind of found my way because I did my undergrad in engineering at Michigan State and then I did my grad at Stanford. And Stanford felt like a fit because the shop was open, and I was meeting artists, other makers and it was great. My younger self, I would've said I treated every class kind of equal. Even if the class I hated, I was treated equally and I put equal effort into it versus the class, it gets heavy on the stuff you love. Like really go in there and see if there's more and more there and the stuff that you don't love, like just get through it. Don't worry. I worried too much about the grades on classes I didn't even care about.
Pritish: Great! Before I let you go, what is the nicest thing that anybody has done for you?
Brendan: That's an interesting question. I love when I get a note from a student years later saying that that class really transformed me and it did something. That's really meaningful. So, it is something like that. It's just maybe the way my mom raised me, like writing a thank you note. But you can really make someone's day if you actually write a physical note and send it to them, especially if someone who changed you. And I've done that to folks who have changed me. And it's really nice.
Pritish: Brendon, that's a great place to close this conversation. Thanks for being on the show, Brendan: Pritish, I really enjoyed all your questions and let's stay in touch. Fantastic. Thank you very much.
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