Ikea has become the low cost manufacturer of good enough quality furniture. The core of its strategy has been innovative product development and effective process design, furniture that can be accessible and assembled by the largest possible number of people. To achieve this the company has deployed top-notch in house technology that helps it carry 9,500 products, control the distribution across 38 distribution centers and negotiate materials through 40 trade offices located majorly in Europe and Asia. Recently the company has incorporated web 2.0 features in its IKEA Fans portal hoping to create a community.
For now, my memo will address the following questions.
1) What the new trends in home entertainment e.g green, interactive display, voice activation, motion sensing, wireless and Internet-enabled devices, mean to IKEA's product strategy for the future?
2) What is the future of IKEA's brand? Can IT help IKEA develop a "habit" brand for design search similar to what Google is for information search.
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Another interesting issue to consider for IKEA is their process of R&D. It sounds like from your short note hear that they do a lot of the design in house. I wonder if they wouldn't benefit from opening up design to a larger community. This could be similar to the process innocentive utilizes http://www.innocentive.com/. Imagine how many people could design stick and peg furniture for IKEA
ReplyDeleteThanks Doug. I thing it is a great comment. I was thinking also about this idea reflecting also on threadless.com business model but innocentive.com is another interesting alternative to leverage on the same issue: how can you sustain your design innovation competency.
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