Ole Kirk Christiansen

Ole Kirk Christiansen (7 April 1891 – 11 March 1958) was the founder of Danish toy company the Lego Group. He was the 10th son of an impoverished family in Jutland in western Denmark. Born in Filskov, Denmark, he trained as a carpenter and started making wooden toys in 1932 to make a living after having lost his job during the depression. Soon after Ole's wife died and left Ole to raise his four sons. Ole eventually found inspiration enough to construct a small wooden duck toy for his children. He soon found that his sons loved the new toy and decided to put them into production, using all the left over wood from his old business. In 1942 a fire broke out at the factory forcing them to rebuild. Initially, he made miniature versions of the houses and furniture as he worked on as a carpenter, but in 1947 moved onto using plastics, which were originally small plastic bears and rattles unlike the bricks we are accustomed to today. By 1949 he had produced over 200 plastic and wooden toys.

He came up with the name Lego from the Danish leg godt which means play well and the company grew to become the Lego Group ("lego" coincidentally means "I put together" in Latin). On March 11, 1958, Christiansen died from a heart attack when he was 66 years old, and his oldest son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen took over the company and bought out his three brothers. Ole Kirk Christiansen's grandson Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen is the current vice chairman of the board of Lego. He was chief executive until 2004, when Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, a former McKinsey consultant, became the new head.