Using Lego® Serious Play® To Introduce Unfamiliar Business and Management Concepts In The Graduate Classroom

We share our experiences of using LEGO® Serious Play® (LSP) as a teaching technique to introduce unfamiliar concepts to graduate students in business and management courses. LSP involves using LEGO bricks to build models that represent ideas, fostering hands-on, reflective, and iterative learning. Results from pre- and post-workshop questionnaires indicated that students’ understanding of and confidence in using unfamiliar concepts such as export supply chains, uncertainty, and innovation ecosystems increases, although not all students found LSP equally beneficial. The experiences of using LSP in six different learning situations underscores the importance of employing diverse teaching techniques to cater to varied learning needs. By adapting facilitation methods like LSP, educators can better support students in grasping abstract business and management concepts, thereby bridging the gap between theory and practice. This paper contributes to the ongoing discourse about the ways that business and management educators can have impact through pedagogical techniques in the graduate classroom.