When Innovation Thrives: IKEA

Hub Magazine carries an indepth feature on innovation at IKEA. In the article the marketing chief of IKEA US, Bill Agee, talks about how an attitude of independence from the rest of the pack means fresh design and better products. An extract:

Hub: How does IKEA encourage a culture of innovation?

There is absolutely an expectation at IKEA that, with our flat organization structure, everyone contributes. Whoever you are within the IKEA organization, you’re expected to contribute your ideas — your new ideas, your old ideas or whatever it may be — and every idea is welcome.

That means that many more innovative ideas rise to the surface, get watched, and actually get executed than in a traditional, hierarchical organization.

The other thing is that we’re a very process-oriented company, meaning that we have three basic processes: creating, communicating and selling the home-furnishings offer.

Each of these three processes has a matrix structure, so that there is somebody like me, a matrix partner, who is responsible for “communicating the offer” in every country in the world. We are equals and we are in constant communication, which means ideas can spread very quickly.

Hub: How does that work with product development?

When it comes to product development, we are extremely innovative because we are operating on our own. We’re not part of the furniture industry here in the U.S., although we do a lot of manufacturing here now. We’re not part of the design community in Sweden, although we have a lot of designers from there.

Our independence has a lot to do with our innovation because we don’t know any better. I’m sure everybody is working in oak this year when it comes to bedroom sets, but we’re working in pine. What the heck is that all about? We feel that we are, to a certain extent, operating outside of standard operating procedures.