LEGO® Serious Play® as a Teaching Method for Strategic Thinking in Business Education: A Systematic Literature Review

LEGO® Serious Play® (LSP) is a facilitated method, first developed for corporate strategy work, in which people build models with LEGO® bricks to express and share their thinking through metaphor. A recent bibliometric study of the broader LSP field shows that the specific link between LSP and strategic decision-making still rests largely on anecdotal case evidence. It places the broader theme of management in a quadrant of low centrality and low density, characterised as an area of untapped potential. This paper narrows this broader theme to strategic thinking, the cognitive capability that underpins decision-making, and responds to this gap by proposing an integrative theoretical framework grounded in constructionism and the boundary-object concept. Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, the paper presents a systematic review of how LSP is used as a teaching method for strategic thinking in undergraduate and postgraduate business education. A Scopus search conducted in July 2026, together with records identified through reference snowballing, yielded 14 studies that met the inclusion criteria after screening. The findings are organised into five thematic domains: general management education, specific business disciplines, transferable skills and employability, diversity and inclusion, and curriculum innovation and corporate training. A critical quality appraisal shows that the evidence is predominantly qualitative and exploratory, with small samples and only one quasi-experimental design. Consequently, a quantitative meta-analysis is not possible, although a narrative synthesis is well supported. The paper concludes that the proposed framework and five-part research agenda provide a working foundation for strengthening the methodological rigour and empirical basis of future research in this field.