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I would like to recall my own Three Laws of Co-Creation. Law 1 states that any for-profit company that uses closed proprietary content, and excludes participation, will tend to loose from competing for-benefit institutions that can count on a community of voluntary contributors and uses open proprietary formats. Law 2 states that, when two for-profit companies are competing, the one opting for open and participatory strategies will outcompete those who do not adopt such practices. Law 3 states that communities of peer producers which successfully can ally themselves with an ecology of business practicing benefit-sharing with the commons they are deriving value from, will be more successful that those that remain isolated.

If LEGO pulls this off, it will really have established itself as the paradigmatic example of business adaptation to the challenges and opportunities presented by the emergence of peer production.

Because LEGO is very much a physical product, it gives us an early indication of the interplay between design by open communities, and the physical production processes undertaken by companies.