Interview with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, Former LEGO CEO

The Carpenter Who Made Furniture

Ole Kirk Christiansen was a carpenter in Billund, Denmark. He built houses, made furniture, and constructed doors and windows. He made what the townspeople needed. In 1924, his factory burned down. He rebuilt it. The Great Depression reached Denmark in the 1930s. There was no one to buy furniture or build houses. Work disappeared. He laid off his employees. Only debt remained.

A Father Who Lost His Wife

In 1932, Ole lost his wife Christine. It was the year his business was collapsing. Four sons remained. He carved wooden duck toys from the scraps left in his workshop. He made something to give to his children. The children loved it. He took it out to sell. He went door to door to shops selling it. He sometimes traded the toys for food to feed his children. That was the beginning of LEGO.

LEGO’s philosophy was defined like this. When children make something, they directly test the laws of nature and their own intellectual and physical limitations. We don’t know exactly when that phrase was coined. However, that spirit was likely already there in 1932. Perhaps it was his responsibility to his children. Perhaps it was a father’s determination to raise his children—those left behind by their mother—well even without a mother. He never remarried. He raised his four sons together with that belief.

Father to Son

Godtfred was Ole’s third son. Starting in 1932, when he turned twelve, he worked in his father’s factory after school. One day, he sent completed wooden duck toys to the train station, but applied varnish only two times instead of the required three. He had saved costs, he proudly told his father. He said it didn’t show.

Ole walked directly to the train station. He collected all the items. He applied one more coat. He sent them back. Was it simply a matter of quality? Perhaps it was a story about the belief he wanted to pass down to his children. And he said: “Det bedste er ikke for godt.” Only the best is good enough. Godtfred carved that phrase into a wooden sign and hung it in the factory. It was his way of remembering what his father had told him. That wooden sign still exists today. It is in Kjeld’s collection.

The Son Became a Father

Godtfred married Edith and had three children. Gunhild, Kjeld, and Hanne. In 1950s LEGO box art, a photo of the three children playing with LEGO bricks appeared. On the 1955 box cover, eight-year-old Kjeld is pictured sitting in front of a LEGO set. That scene was reprinted as-is on the 2008 LEGO 50th anniversary set. In 1961, Godtfred gave Kjeld a child-sized Ford Model T car as a gift. Play was the language of that family, their philosophy, their survival, and their belief.

In October 1969, twenty-one-year-old Kjeld was returning home with his younger sister Hanne when they had a traffic accident. Hanne died. Kjeld was seriously injured. Godtfred seriously considered selling the company due to the shock. He didn’t sell.

We cannot fully know the reasons he endured and overcame that pain. However, Kjeld inherited precisely that. The passage of time isn’t simply about becoming old. All the suffering and happiness that comes with it is piled up here. That is heritage. Ten years later, in 1979, Kjeld became CEO of the LEGO Group.

Expansion and Cracks

When Kjeld became CEO in 1979, he expanded LEGO into broader areas. Theme sets, minifigures, LEGO.com, Lego Mindstorms, and licensed products followed in sequence. In the late 1990s, the pace of expansion accelerated further. It moved forward on the premise that the more you make, the more you sell. In 2003, sales dropped 26% from the previous year. The more products increased, the further they drifted from the standards Ole had set. Kjeld once forgot that. The more he made, the fainter the original standards became. But soon he realized it again. The eight-year-old child on the 1955 box cover was still there inside.

The Way He Let Go

In 2004, Kjeld stepped down from his CEO position. It was not an abandonment of his management role. He stepped down from that position to create a structure where philosophy could survive. He took on the position of chairman of KIRKBI A/S and the LEGO Foundation Board. As owner of the LEGO Group and vice chairman of the board, he directly designed the ownership structure. He stepped down from the CEO position but took his place on the path where philosophy needed to flow. In 2008, his name was added to the National Toy Hall of Fame. His grandfather Ole was already recorded in the same place in 1989. The grandson and grandfather were recorded in the same place.

Soulpapa Marketing’s Perspective

LEGO’s first toy was not made to be sold. In 1932, a father who had lost his wife made something to give to his four sons. Ole carved a duck from leftover wood scraps. The children loved it. It became LEGO.

That love became a belief, and the belief became a way of parenting. Godtfred worked in his father’s factory starting at age twelve. He saw his father walk directly to the train station after he varnished just one coat less. Kjeld appeared on the LEGO box cover at age eight. Kjeld’s son Thomas left these words: “Play is the language through which we explore the world as children.” It is the same as what Ole believed in 1932 when he carved the duck.

LEGO is now in its fourth generation spanning three predecessors. Not because of its private structure. Not because the father lectured his son—but because he showed him how to live it out directly. What protected the brand was not bylaws or a board of directors. It was how the father loved his son. LEGO is now the most valued toy brand in the world. Children in 130 countries hold the same bricks in their hands. In those hands, what the carpenter of Billund left to his son in 1932 still lives on.

References

• Ole Kirk Christiansen — Wikipedia
• Godtfred Kirk Christiansen — Wikipedia
• Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen — Wikipedia
• Lego Group — Wikipedia

Original Korean article: https://soulpapa.co.kr/2026/05/07/ceo-interview-lego-2/

Insights from Soulpapa Marketing — Korea’s digital marketing agency.