Review of the book Great IKEA

I am a big fan of IKEA! They went to a market which is very conservative and transform it for the better! There are only few companies in the world where their name is worldwide recognized and part of the international culture.

There are McDonalds, Google, Amazon, Walmart, but until IKEA there wasn’t a recognized company in the furniture sector.

Why it took so long for the furniture sector?

The problem in this sector is the mindset. Twenty years ago, our home was considered as an extension to our image. We used our home for celebrations, inviting colleagues and bosses and for networking. There is a lot of emphasis on quality, style and brands.

But the time changed! We become more mobile. If you were born in one country it become the new normal to live for a while in a new city or new country as well. This new mindset opened a new opportunity that wasn’t available before.

What did I learn from this book?

Great Ikea by Elen Lewis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was the first book I read about a specific brand like IKEA, so I didn’t know what to expect from it. I was fascinating to learn more about the founder of the company, about his philosophy and how this brand change the way people think about furniture and not the other way around, i like the end of the book, because there was analyzes of the threads the company should overcome in order to be a sustainable brand.

I think the writing style of the author could be more “straight on the point”, instead of repeating in different pages what was written before that.

Hope to read more from this series.

View all my reviews

Aleks Vladimriov is a Senior Software Developer, recognized Project Manager and Soft-skilled trainer and a coach.

Aleks Vladimirov

Solution Engineering Manager at Thales | Senior IT Professional | Startup Mentor and Product Manager

Bio

Aleks is experienced Product Manager with an engineer background and over 10 years of experience as a software developer. He works with different governments and is responsible for negotiation features and requirements, understanding the customers’ needs and supporting the senior management with regular reports and analysis. He held various positions starting as a software developer, moving to a team leader and software architect.

He strives in waterfall and agile environment alike. He is certified Scrum Master and Prince2 Practitioner and he knows how to design business processes and help teams optimize their work.
During his tenure, he had to wear many hats, prioritizing business requirements, delegating work and mentoring team members, creating mockups with Balsamiq, providing MS Project plan to the senior management.

He had worked in many international teams, located in the same city or distributed in different countries and continents. He had been a team leader of cross functional international team of 8 people.

In his current position, he is very much client focused. He has excellent presentation skills.
He delivers training sessions on presentation skills and leadership and he had helped hundred of people to improve their presentation skills.

He is also interested in creating more positive changes in the workplace by using entrepreneurship skills.
He had won startup competition where his team had validated and develop a business idea from scratch.

In his free time, he writes in his blog about effective product development.

Sonu May 25, 2012 at 3:59 pm

Don’t ask me !!! I so much love their products. So praticcal and they get old and become even more beautiful … Thank God, around Paris, we have 4 big and large Ikeas, but I don’t have a car anymore to go there easily, so each trip gets even more exotic. Argh …

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