Published 22 September 2017 • Inter IKEA newsroom
IKEA and Linnaeus University renews collaboration
IKEA believes that people’s everyday needs and frustrations are best solved together. To learn more we form in-depth and strategic collaborations with universities to activate the collective brain. We continue with Linnaeus University, focusing on research around life at home and future talents.
For almost 8 years IKEA and Linnaeus University have collaborated in the program The Bridge, focusing on Life at Home and the various aspects of the production process. In addition the collaboration have also included other projects such as IKEA contributions to the Linnaeus University master program in Innovation through Business, Engineering and Design. IKEA and Linnaeus University have now agreed to continue develop the strategic partnership with a mission to find synergies between IKEA and Linnaeus University.
The collaboration will have a common starting point in the strong culture from Småland, the strengths and focuses of Linnaeus University, and the IKEA challenges around being truly affordable for the many people, reaching and interacting with the many, and enabling a positive impact on the planet, people and society. “Our ambition is to increase our focus towards collaborations with students and at Linnaeus University we want to find untapped sources of talent, knowledge and capabilities,” says Tony Sandelius, New Business and Innovation manager, at IKEA of Sweden.
The driving force for the collaboration is quality, focusing on an arena that enables creativity, mobility and shared exploration of the unknown. The strategic partnership is based on equal terms to find the synergies between innovative modes of co-creation and extraction of new forms of knowledge for future development. When renewing the new collaboration, the findings from the evaluations of the existing collaboration have been a source of inspiration and has been taken into account in the new setup.
“By building on common values, our roots in Småland and by bringing our different strengths and expertise together, we have high ambitions to create the future way of collaboration to bridge the gap between academia and corporations,” says Peter Aronsson, rector at Linnaeus University.
The collaboration with Linnaeus University is the first of several strategic university collaborations that IKEA will initiate. To strengthen the research and development capabilities, connect with talents and step into the innovation systems surrounding universities, IKEA will continuously build new relationships and collaborations.