Deciding how much latitude to give users is an essential part of any mass-customization program, says B. Joseph Pine, the author of Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition (Harvard Business School Press, 1993). “Fundamentally,” he says, “customers don’t want choice. They just want exactly what they want. Your job is to help them figure out what it is they want, because often they don’t know or can’t articulate it.”

That’s in essence at the core of LEGO new business model that articulates in 3 steps: (1) the user chose the design s/he wants using a support tool; (2) The factory creates an ad-hoc packaging of the bricks; (3) the packaging are sent to the customer.

I am not sure this model fulfill the idea of helping the user to figure out what s/he wants but I really like the idea of customization of the bricks set.

(via)