By KIM BELLARD
I’m an innovation junkie, the additional on the market the higher, however every now and then it’s good to be reminded that simply because an organization has been round for some time, innovation remains to be potential.
Two examples: LEGO® and Kodak.
Let’s begin with LEGO. If you’re round any babies – and maybe not even all that small – you most likely have seen them enjoying with Legos. Legos have been round, in varied incarnations, for longer than I’ve been alive, and that’s saying one thing. Most adults watching children assemble their Legos most likely have two reactions: “gosh, I want they’d make them even extra sophisticated” (word to the oblivious reader – that was sarcastic), and “nicely, not less than they’re not on their screens.”
So I guess lots of us have a barely shocked response to Lego’s announcement Monday Jan sixth to CES 2026: LEGO SMART Play™.
The important thing innovation is the SMART Brick, which “is filled with applied sciences that convey play to life together with sensors, accelerometers, gentle sensing and a sound sensor in addition to a miniature speaker pushed by an onboard synthesiser, and rather more, along with simple wi-fi charging.” All that’s powered by a customized chip, which is smaller than one of many studs on a LEGO brick.
The LEGO Group states: “With none setup, SMART Bricks are magically ‘conscious’ of one another’s positions and orientations in 3D area, due to a novel, high-accuracy, magnetic positioning system. They will additionally talk through a self-organizing community that adapts to play. Superior onboard techniques let SMART Bricks comprehend and work together with one another, in addition to the followers constructing with them.” “Magic” on this context which means Bluetooth.
Nerdist calls it “essentially the most thrilling innovation in screenless play ever,”
“For over 90 years, the LEGO Group has sparked creativeness and creativity in youngsters across the globe. Because the world evolves, so can we— innovating to fulfill the play wants of every new technology. LEGO SMART Play™ is the subsequent thrilling chapter in our LEGO System in Play and one thing we’re tremendous enthusiastic about having the ability to convey to the world at this scale,” stated Julia Goldin, Chief Product & Advertising and marketing Officer of the LEGO Group.
Tom Donaldson, Senior Vice President & Head of Inventive Play Lab on the LEGO Group stated “The launch of LEGO SMART Play™ brings creativity, know-how, and storytelling collectively to make constructing worlds and tales much more partaking, and all with no display screen. We actually consider we’re setting a brand new normal for interactive, imaginative experiences and might’t wait to see this innovation within the fingers of children after we launch this yr.”
LEGO is partnering with Disney and Lucasfilm for 3 ‘All-In-One’ LEGO Star Wars™ constructing units, that includes SMART Bricks, SMART Tags, and Good Minifigures that “energy the system and permit builders’ creations to change into interactive, responding to actions with acceptable sounds and behaviors, permitting for a very responsive play expertise.” LEGO being LEGO, in fact it’s all appropriate with present LEGO Techniques-in-Play.
The three preliminary units are constructing units for the Purple Wing X-Wing, the Darth Vader TIE Fighter™, and the Throne Room Duel & A-Wing™, and will probably be out there March 1.
Nerdist’s Rotem Rusak raves:
However simply because a type of play doesn’t contain screens doesn’t imply it may’t evolve or incorporate the cool applied sciences at our disposal right now. LEGO SMART Play isn’t making an attempt to rework LEGO into one thing it isn’t. Though its know-how is superior, the aim of it isn’t simply to create new tech, however to reinforce the standard play that has all the time been on the coronary heart of the LEGO model.
She provides: “That is actually a wonderful manner to make use of know-how. The LEGO Group is placing technological developments to work to bolster one thing that’s already so good, fairly than making an attempt to rewrite or erase it, as we’ve seen occur in so many different arenas.”
That’s a wonderful approach to do innovation.
Then there’s Kodak. Once I noticed a headline in Digital Digicam World naming Kodak the “comeback king of 2025,” and one other assessment calling the Kodak PIXPRO C1 as the most popular digicam of the yr, my first response wasn’t “how good for them,” however fairly: “wait — Kodak remains to be round?”
To these of us of earlier generations, Kodak was the Apple of its day. Daring, modern, well-designed, omnipresent. With the arrival of digital cameras after which cell phone cameras, although, it was usually thought to have misplaced its mojo and, certainly, I could be forgiven for assuming it had curled up out of business or worse. Don Stapley in DCW explains:
The comeback king has been revitalizing its fortunes largely by betting massive on its ultra-cheap PixPro line of compact cameras – you already know, the sort of digicam we have been all assured was dying out. The corporate that first made its identify with point-and-shoot cameras a century in the past is doing so as soon as once more.
Chris Gampat’s assessment in The Phoblographer gushes: “Make no mistake, the Kodak PIXPRO C1 is a digicam that feels a lot just like the early iPhone if it was stuffed right into a digicam physique.” Mr. Gampat additional tells us: “Images doesn’t have to be that severe on a regular basis…The Kodak PIXPRO C1 is an excellent reminder of that in a time when the world round us is burning.”
Japanese picture retailer Map Digicam listed the Kodak PixPro FZ55 as one of the best promoting digicam of the yr. Kodak even has a world licensing program, which, as The Washington Put up reviews, is especially fashionable in South Korea.
That’s not to say that every one is sunshine and roses in Rochester. Its second quarter 2025 monetary outcomes warned that its varied debt obligations “increase substantial doubt concerning the Firm’s means to proceed as a going concern as of the issuance date of the Firm’s second quarter financials,” though its 3rd quarter outcomes belied these considerations.
The purpose is, with all its historical past and with all of the headlines in opposition to it, Kodak remains to be discovering methods to innovate in its area, not by being the flashiest or having essentially the most trendy tech, however constructing on its model and delivering the experiences prospects are searching for.
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Not the whole lot must be AI. Not the whole lot even has to contain screens. Not the whole lot has to incorporate the newest tech. Right here’s to improvements that, as Ms. Rusak says, “work to bolster one thing that’s already so good, fairly than making an attempt to rewrite or erase it,”
Kim is a former emarketing exec at a significant Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented Tincture.io, and now common THCB contributor
