LEGO^® Education BuildToExpress is based on the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY process, which is a business tool for enhancing company performance, improving strategic planning, managing successful projects, and building better teams. The program's goal is to foster creative thinking through building metaphors of organizational identities and experiences using LEGO bricks. Following the process, participants would work through business-related scenarios using LEGO constructions to represent their thoughts and/or solutions. This approach was grounded in research that suggested that hands-on, minds-on learning produces a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the world and its possibilities.

After years of implementation, it became clear the process at the heart of SERIOUS PLAY could extend its benefits beyond the confines of adults in the business world. In 2009, LEGO Education and a team of educational psychologists transformed LEGO SERIOUS PLAY into a program tailored for instructors. The program combines a unique teaching methodology with hands-on manipulatives, and the objectives are the same – to foster creative thinking and teamwork within the classroom environment across curriculum areas while focusing on a facilitation process that enables deeper student reflection and constructive dialogue. This combined effort resulted in a teaching process, professional development program, and a specially formulated set of LEGO bricks now known as LEGO Education BuildToExpress.