IKEA. Strategic competences and capabilities

231 stores in 24 countries, 522 million visitors during one year and nearly
20 billion euros in sales make IKEA the most successful furniture retailer
in the world (IKEA, 2007; Sloan, 2007). In addition this is achieved
without taking advantage of people or the environment, as one of IKEA’s
policies is to have an overall positive impact on both (Barner, 2007).
But why is the Sweden-based company so successful? And how did it
become that way? Which strategic issues did IKEA face? What are the
values, resources and competences the company bases its operations on?
In order to answer these questions this work uses two strategic
frameworks. For the historic development of the company the ‘dynamic
competence and capability framework’ is used. Furthermore the competitive
edge IKEA has in comparison to its concurrence is explained with
the ‘static competences and capabilities framework’, which is based on a
company’s special set of resources. Within this latter framework there is
an emphasis on knowledge as a fundamental resource and on knowledge
integration, which is separately discussed.
The remainder of this work is therefore structured as follows. In the
second section the frameworks of static and dynamic strategic competences
and capabilities are explained. Afterwards, in the third part, the
dynamic model is adopted to IKEA by applying it to some of the most
important strategic decisions that led to the success of the company.
Furthermore this paper is seeking to evaluate IKEA’s current resources,
competences and capabilities within the static competence and capability
framework. Eventually the integration of knowledge at IKEA is examined.
The analysis finishes with a conclusion revising the main points.