LKK Design: Rapid Growth of a Chinese Design House

This case is about the growth of one of China's top design companies. The design trade is a knowledge-intensive and traditional industry. The protagonist Jia Wei started LKK in 2004. Following the industry's traditional organizational model, over 10 years he managed to grow the company's staff size to over a thousand and reach the peak of the industry. Jia's understanding of how the organization structure could unleash output upgraded several times. Owing to the reorganizations, LKK was able to reach 100 per cent annual growth rate. The story begins with Jia graduating from college and tells of the founding and evolution of LKK's organizational structure step-by-step. It allows participants to clearly see the relationship between organizational structure changes and enterprise growth. The goal is to illustrate that there is no ultimate, static organizational structure that necessarily leads to rapid development. The authors also try to use this material to illustrate that organizational culture needs to evolve along with the organizational structure. In addition, this case features change leadership.