Google and the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method have been around for approximately the same time. Google for 25 years - LSP for 23 years. Indirectly, it appears that Google has accelerated our need for a method like LEGO SERIOUS PLAY.

The LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method is a facilitated thinking, communication and problem-solving method, where participants are led through a series of questions, which go deeper and deeper. Each participant first builds his or her own three-dimensional LEGO model in response to the facilitator's questions. These 3D models serve as talking starters and are the basis for the knowledge-sharing, problem-solving and decision-making. The essence of the process is BUILD FIRST - TALK SECOND.

In a recent experiment at the University of California - Thinking first versus googling first: Consequences and preferences - two groups of participants were asked to generate answers to the same set of trivia questions. They could BOTH use the internet. However one group could NOT use the internet right away (the "thinking-before-googling" group), whereas the other group were asked to use the internet right away without a prior attempt to think about the answers (the "googling-right-away" group). ). Overall, thinking-before-googling helped participants remember more answers to the trivia questions on a later memory test than those who did googling-right-away.

There are however potential costs, as well as benefits, to such ready access to answers and information. In the words of Danish scientist Ole Lauridsen, author of The Brain and Learning; “If we are to acquire new knowledge, it is always valuable, to think more broadly about the topic first, before we focus. If we do that the neural networks have been activated, and therefore open to a deeper understanding and intake of new knowledge. Google has made us lazy. We don’t do enough to make the brain understand a topic, before we go to the internet".

LSP requires us to exercise our brains

One of the supreme powers of the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY(LSP) method is the never-to-be-broken rule to silently THINK & BUILD FIRST – TALK SECOND. In many other facilitated methods, some participants have a tendency to discount their own inner wisdom and either hold back or parrot another response from a colleague who is quicker to speak. Having a process and a prop (the LEGO model) helps all of us acquire new knowledge by giving us time to think before we speak.

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