By KIM BELLARD
I’m an innovation junkie, the additional on the market the higher, however occasionally it’s good to be reminded that simply because an organization has been round for some time, innovation continues to be doable.
Two examples: LEGO® and Kodak.
Let’s begin with LEGO. If you’re round any young children – and maybe not even all that small – you most likely have seen them enjoying with Legos. Legos have been round, in numerous 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” (notice to the oblivious reader – that was sarcastic), and “properly, at the least they’re not on their screens.”
So I guess quite a lot 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 full of applied sciences that carry play to life together with sensors, accelerometers, mild sensing and a sound sensor in addition to a miniature speaker pushed by an onboard synthesiser, and rather more, along with straightforward 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 house, due to a novel, high-accuracy, magnetic positioning system. They will additionally talk by way of 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 kids across the globe. Because the world evolves, so can we— innovating to fulfill the play wants of every new era. LEGO SMART Play™ is the subsequent thrilling chapter in our LEGO System in Play and one thing we’re tremendous enthusiastic about with the ability to carry to the world at this scale,” mentioned Julia Goldin, Chief Product & Advertising Officer of the LEGO Group.
Tom Donaldson, Senior Vice President & Head of Artistic Play Lab on the LEGO Group mentioned “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 really consider we’re setting a brand new customary for interactive, imaginative experiences and may’t wait to see this innovation within the palms of children once we launch this 12 months.”
LEGO is partnering with Disney and Lucasfilm for 3 ‘All-In-One’ LEGO Star Wars™ constructing units, that includes SMART Bricks, SMART Tags, and Sensible Minifigures that “energy the system and permit builders’ creations to develop into interactive, responding to actions with acceptable sounds and behaviors, permitting for a really responsive play expertise.” LEGO being LEGO, after all it’s all appropriate with current LEGO Techniques-in-Play.
The three preliminary units are constructing units for the Pink 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 will possibly’t evolve or incorporate the cool applied sciences at our disposal immediately. LEGO SMART Play isn’t making an attempt to remodel 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 boost the normal play that has at all times been on the coronary heart of the LEGO model.
She provides: “That is really a phenomenal approach to make use of know-how. The LEGO Group is placing technological developments to work to bolster one thing that’s already so good, slightly than making an attempt to rewrite or erase it, as we’ve seen occur in so many different arenas.”
That’s a phenomenal approach to do innovation.
Then there’s Kodak. After I noticed a headline in Digital Digital camera World naming Kodak the “comeback king of 2025,” and one other evaluate calling the Kodak PIXPRO C1 as the most well liked digicam of the 12 months, my first response wasn’t “how good for them,” however slightly: “wait — Kodak continues to be round?”
To these of us of earlier generations, Kodak was the Apple of its day. Daring, revolutionary, 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 might be forgiven for assuming it had curled up into chapter 11 or worse. Don Stapley in DCW explains:
The comeback king has been revitalizing its fortunes largely by betting huge on its ultra-cheap PixPro line of compact cameras – you realize, the form of digicam we have been all assured was dying out. The corporate that first made its title with point-and-shoot cameras a century in the past is doing so as soon as once more.
Chris Gampat’s evaluate 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: “Pictures doesn’t must be that critical on a regular basis…The Kodak PIXPRO C1 is a superb reminder of that in a time when the world round us is burning.”
Japanese picture retailer Map Digital camera listed the Kodak PixPro FZ55 as the most effective promoting digicam of the 12 months. Kodak even has a world licensing program, which, as The Washington Publish reviews, is especially in style in South Korea.
That isn’t to say that each one is sunshine and roses in Rochester. Its second quarter 2025 monetary outcomes warned that its numerous debt obligations “increase substantial doubt concerning the Firm’s skill 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 issues.
The purpose is, with all its historical past and with all of the headlines towards it, Kodak continues to be discovering methods to innovate in its house, not by being the flashiest or having essentially the most fashionable tech, however constructing on its model and delivering the experiences clients are in search of.
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Not all the pieces needs to be AI. Not all the pieces even has to contain screens. Not all the pieces has to incorporate the most recent tech. Right here’s to improvements that, as Ms. Rusak says, “work to bolster one thing that’s already so good, slightly than making an attempt to rewrite or erase it,”
Kim is a former emarketing exec at a serious Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented Tincture.io, and now common THCB contributor