Together with IKEA
How could we move to a circular business model?
To create a better everyday life for all people impacted by its business, IKEA wanted to understand how a circular business model would be attractive to its customers.
Big shoes to fill
Running over 450 stores globally, and serving over 850 million customers IKEA is the seventh largest retailer in the world. And so is their impact on it. Going circular might be a great way to lower that impact while still being able to offer great design, quality and affordability. The question was: what circular economy concepts would work best for IKEA?
Focus on value creation
Building upon the research that was done internally, IKEA teamed up with Innoboost to explore circular business models and make them actionable. Which started by understanding the value created for a key target group of IKEA: people moving to other places to live, who need to redecorate to feel at home and look for design that fits their lifestyle and lifephase. But don’t want to replace their furniture each time.
And for their other key stakeholder: Planet Earth, who longs for businesses to stay within planetary boundaries and help her restore nature.
Four concepts to build upon
With an international team and guided by Innoboost we dived into the experience for a circular business concept. Envision the value for the consumer as well as for the franchisee and identify risks, enablers and potential new partnerships to make a new concept happen. And we came up with not one concept, but four directions for possible new value propositions. Opening up the heads and hearts for circular business.
A circular agenda
Exploring new opportunities sparked further internal discussions and activities leading to a circular agenda with the ambition to be circular and climate positive by 2030. Massively impacting everything that IKEA does, to inspire and enable the many people to live a better everyday life within the boundaries of the planet.
