What Makes IKEA’s Insights Team a Strategic Powerhouse?

In this episode of the Greenbook Podcast, host Karen Lynch speaks with Joel Renkema, Global Head of Insights at Inter IKEA Group. From foundational lessons at Procter & Gamble to shaping strategy at one of the world’s most iconic retail brands, Joel shares how IKEA integrates insights across its entire value chain—from supply and logistics to retail and communication.

The conversation covers the power of ethnographic research, IKEA’s unique approach to segmentation and innovation, and how foresight planning informs sustainable, long-term strategies. Joel also discusses how empathy, immersion, and activation are essential for future-proofing insights teams and keeping research human in an AI-driven world.

Key Discussion Points:

• Joel’s career journey from P&G to Inter IKEA and what he learned at each stop
• How IKEA uses ethnographic research and employee-led home visits to fuel innovation
• A reframing of segmentation—designing for life stages and universal needs rather than narrow targets
• The strategic role of foresight in planning for climate, mobility, and urbanization
• Why empathy and business immersion matter more than perfect data in impactful insights work

Resources & Links:

• Inter IKEA Group
• IKEA Life at Home Report

You can reach out to Joel Renkema on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Joel Renkema for being our guest. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

Karen: Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. It’s Karen Lynch. I’m very happy to be hosting this episode, as I always am. Today I’m talking to a gentleman that I had the pleasure of meeting a few weeks ago at a different event, not one of our events, but the Yale University InsightsOn conference. So today, I’m talking to Joel Renkema. He is with Inter IKEA Group. He is the Global Head of Insights, and he inspired me with his talk at that event, and I quickly approached him and said, “I’d love to have you on the podcast. There’s so much value you can bring to the Greenbook audience.” So Joel, first, let me just say, welcome to the Greenbook Podcast. 

Joel: Thank you. Thanks for being brave to bring me on here.

Karen: Oh well, it did not require bravery, except maybe to approach you and say, “Hey, can I give you this invitation?” But to all of our listeners, Joel spearheads a lot of things at the IKEA Group, you know, just corporate and business strategy and product innovation and retail development, supply, media, communication, working with a great team of individuals, but that, you know that Global Head of Insights really means he’s the head of a lot of things up there. So, let’s just talk about, before we get too much into your role, Joel, tell us a little bit, kind of, about your background and how you got to where you are right now. 

Joel: Yeah, that’s [unintelligible]. I’m originally from Australia, so a little bit far from home at the moment. But started out in the Public FMCG [world] with Procter & Gamble. It’s been a couple of years in different countries, in different roles, all across different insights, analytics, types of roles. Global, local, regional capability, sort of the gap it across. So, Public FMCG Baby from the beginning at P&G, so it was school of marketing and insights, right? Spent a little bit of time at Reckitt [unintelligible] as well, so similar sort of FMCG, public company out of the UK [unintelligible]. And then about three-and-a-half years ago, moved to Inter IKEA or Inter IKEA Group as the [unintelligible] for IKEA across the world. So, based in the Netherlands for a good seven or eight years.

Karen: Were there any—like, if you think about the roles that you had, and you had more than one role at those companies—you know, anything about kind of milestones along the way that you think set you up for success in your current role?

Joel: Yeah, for sure. I think from day one was throw in the deep end, right, and I think that’s it’s kind of followed the trajectory of the career so far. It’s right. It’s like tech roles, I’ve always jumped into roles that probably a bit too big or a bit too dangerous, or a bit too something else because then you learn a lot through that. So, I think what was really powerful for me was that it’s starting from a local, regional standpoint rather than starting in a global [unintelligible] standpoint. Because if you think about when we look at this industry, like, insights, right, everything happens on the ground. That’s where consumers are, that’s where competitors are, that’s where retail is, that’s where the context case [unintelligible]. So, starting in that area, I think really, really set me up well in that direction. And then as the starting for a company like Procter & Gamble, look, one of the reasons I joined them was one of the—somebody said to me, before I was about to join, it’s like getting paid to go to Harvard because it’s the ABCs of insights, marketing, brand building, right, to go there and learn and develop and figure it out. But then I think after a good couple years of learning and [unintelligible] because it’s basically like a marketing school. It’s a great, great school. And I loved that, right? And that’s what I needed, straight out of university. But then I realized a couple of years later, I wanted to go in the deep end again. And I’m a fan of not knowing what you’re going to do and having to figure it out. So, that’s why I actually moved out of Reckitt [unintelligible], like, 2014. I [unintelligible] the UK because that as a company is phenomenally different at Procter & Gamble, right? It was very performance driven, very, like, entrepreneurial, everybody has a role and responsibility. If you don’t do it, it won’t get done, right, and so you have to go in the detail and figure it out. And I think that really, really shifted a lot of ways of working. So, I think Procter was brilliant teaching me the ABCs of brand building, insights, and marketing, and so forth. Reckitt was brilliant in terms of teaching me the ABCs of how to get things done living in a corporate world, influence management, activation of insights. So what, right? [driving] through there as well. Another thing, really utilizing those both schools. So, then going into IKEA and then combine all of it together in terms of, like, what insights bring, [unintelligible], and that activates through that in terms of getting stuff too. So.

Karen: There’s two points I want to just make before I dig into your current role, then. Like, one [clear throat] every time I have met somebody who has started their career at P&G, it is very much like exactly that metaphor that you use: kind of like, those foundational ABCs of what you need to know to work in those industries. Like, I haven’t met somebody who hasn’t come out of P&G with a really stellar foundation in all of it, right, in insights, in marketing, communication, all of it. Like, it’s so grounded and such a great start. So, kudos to them for their hiring practices out of school. I think that’s great. And the other thing, and this is just going to be a bandwagon for a moment, for the women in the back, one of the things that I have always noted, and once I heard it, I couldn’t unhear it, it’s the idea that men traditionally do exactly what you did, which is go for the roles that are slightly over their head because they are confident and know they can take on that challenge. Women often kind of hold themselves back and say, “I’m not quite qualified for that, yet.” So, that’s just, you know, not to get on that soapbox for just a moment, but also to get on it, I want people to hear you and hear what you said, and if you didn’t tune in completely, please have a rewind. Joel, that’s a great example for everybody. So, thank you for sharing that.

Joel: That’s good. I think the more that we’re aware of that, the better, right? Because I think we see what we see, and we feel what we feel, maybe not for others, so I guess, as managers and [unintelligible] through that as well. That’s good to create your way out of. 

Karen: Yeah, pretty cool, pretty cool. Especially now, also. I could sidebar into, you know, all of the upskilling we’re all doing for AI, you know? Like, if we approached it as I don’t have the skill set, none of us had five years ago, right? But if we approached it as I don’t have the skill set, then we’d never be ready for the today that we’re in today. So anyway, that’s a different conversation. Let’s go into [laugh] your role at IKEA right now, and kind of what it looks like day-to-day, and what you’re mostly responsible for.

Joel: So, when I joined IKEA a couple of years ago, I inherited a more of a data insights function, I would say. We had gone through the process of in-housing a lot of the data digital product capability that we had, right, [unintelligible] capabilities. The beautiful thing about IKEA, unlike a public FMCG type of companies, we have [debt] and we have a retail system, right? So, we operate through the value [unintelligible] types of data as well. And so, then with that, you can do a lot of things. So, we started through the data journey, but pretty quickly I realized we were more of a data function than a data-driven insights function. And then we decided to—and another thing, we hit—was it 2021, 2022—and like most companies, we realized we, you know, we got shaken up with Covid, right? And we realized that maybe the foundation [unintelligible] place as a company, as well as in our functional areas, like, many companies were. And it was a good sort of shaking because it made us rethink, well, [unintelligible]. Then we weren’t—I think, within a couple of months, we [unintelligible] company. We realized that we needed to reorganize insights and [unintelligible] for the whole business. And so, we started to do that. And then you went through a process of figuring out, look where—where you create value as IKEA, where you create value as insights, and therefore, what should we be in, what should we do? So, then one of the biggest unique things about IKEA is that we have the value chain. As I say, from the forest to the home, right? So, you know, we have our [unintelligible] supply network and logistics network, but a lot of those IKEA entities booked through. We add our sort of brand building, we have [unintelligible] development, we have communication development, we have in-house communication factors that go create content, et cetera, like, the IKEA catalog [unintelligible] that we used to create. And then we operate the retail system through the IKEA network. And so then, from an insight standpoint, [we took an opportunity] to say, look, how can we connect all of that together? Because too often, insights industry—sorry companies—you have, like, a consumer insights function, then a business insights function, and different pieces. But the best way that a company can move is moving in one direction and utilize the insight in one way. So, we created a insights organization that goes all the way from the forest to the [unintelligible]. So, we had, like, supply logistics insights through to retail insights and everything in between, and then we set ourselves up for, you know, five to ten year foresight strategic insight, where should we go, where is the world going, and how we ought to be moving forward, as well as, like, disruptive innovation-type stuff that we lead. [unintelligible] operational and, like, you know, when you go into an IKEA store tomorrow, if you click the [app in] store [unintelligible] all that comes into that team, right? So, we understand day-to-day how things operate as well. So, then it’s all connected, right, forest to our strategic operational, connected together. And that’s how we run. As a—as Inter IKEA Group, just so people know where the [unintelligible], so we don’t operate as stores, per se, but we enable so stores right through. And we develop all of the supply retail brand [unintelligible] to enable it as well. So, it’s more on the planning, development, and [unintelligible] enable that.

Karen: Nothing like a good disruption to make you rethink how [laugh] you work operationally. I mean, I think that’s one of the silver linings of what did happen in the last several years, is the great rethink, right? And I think we’re still having that. I think generative AI has had us all doing a lot of, you know, rethinking as well. So, I’m happy to be a fan of that kind of disruption when, you know, when everybody you know, can stay above water and change what they need to change. So, I love that you called that out. And I just want to go to your talk, specifically at the InsightsOn event because I think probably most people listening know a thing or two about IKEA. I mean, I’m sitting at an IKEA desk. I have an IKEA, kind of, standing side table next to me. I have an IKEA bookcase. I mean, I’m a brand fan, so I’m a little biased when I say I loved something you shared at this conference, which is about a chair. So, talk a little bit about that, and I don’t even want to say more than that and spoil it [laugh] because you started by posing a question, is how would we define a chair? So, please go [laugh].

Joel: I think is this is what you’re saying, [unintelligible] the way that we look at things, right, is… were you operating in innovation or a business anything like ours, right? You look in a chair, you say it’s a chair, and that’s how you would define it. And I think if you ask me, people like we did at Yale, “What is it?” Everyone says, “It’s a chair.” Of course, it’s a chair. A car is a car, a bus is a bus, a chair is a chair. Like, it is what it is, right? But we look at it differently at IKEA because we see it as a chair, but we also see it as so many other things, right? It’s something that you stand on to fix a light bulb. It’s something that you sit on to have dinner with. It’s something that you put in the corner of a room as a style icon, if you want to. It’s something that you put in your bedroom to pile your clothes onto after the day. It’s something that’s universal in many ways. And for us, the reason why that’s important is, as a business, we’ve always been based on creating a better everyday life [unintelligible] people, right? It’s all day proving life at home. It’s not about selling a chair. Chairs will come and go, tables will come and go, those things will come and go. There’s just executional points, right? The key for us is, how do we create a better everyday life? And we do that through [unintelligible] ways such as the chair. The key for that is really unstacking that, what it is that you’re a solving for, right? The fundamental [unintelligible] consumers don’t buy a chair and they buy a solution, and that solution could [unintelligible]. It also [unintelligible], you know, many businesses also look at it as well and say, “Okay, how do I have one consumer and get them to buy five chairs? I want to get them to buy a cheap chair and an expensive chair and a chair for that because I built a [repertoire].” And of course we do. If you walk into a store, we have something for [unintelligible], right? And everybody knows, you walk into a store watching one chair, you end up walking out with a room, right? That’s [unintelligible]. But for us, in terms of what we do, it’s like, how do we not try to get one person by 20 chairs, but how do we get one chair of three purposes? Because that’s a value [unintelligible], right? And, yeah, there’s business sense in that, that says that if you can do that, you can reach more people, the penetration mindset as opposed to consumption mindset. But it’s also your we are there for the [unintelligible] people and the [unintelligible] can define as [unintelligible] might be more challenged, or best space or [unintelligible] or best time and resources. So, we don’t want to have to make it so one person who doesn’t have a lot of money has to spend a lot. We want to make it so that it’s like, this is what you have. Now, how do I give you something that can serve multiple purposes so that for you, it creates value in that [unintelligible] as well. And that sort of shapes—a lot of comes from our business model, but it also therefore shapes how we think about innovation and how we solve through that as well. 

Karen: Yeah, it’s funny there are moments in time when I talk to somebody who works on the brand side, and I see myself as a customer, not just a researcher. We have at home, we have one of those IKEA bookcases is where the bin slide out, and it was in multi-colors when our kids were little. We had—it was, you know, red, yellow, green, blue where the color of the plastic drawers that slid out, I don’t know if you know the piece of furniture. I mean, you probably do. It’s iconic. And I became an empty nester a few years ago, and I didn’t get rid of this piece of furniture, but I swapped out the drawers for white, and now I use it for, actually, downstairs in a separate space in my home, which is, like, my art desk. I have art supplies in it. So, same piece of furniture that served me well when my kids were little, I repurposed, and it’s now serving a different purpose in my home. That is a value piece of furniture. And it didn’t mean that I stopped buying from IKEA. I sure as heck have, almost regularly. But the value of that one piece of furniture has stayed with us for two decades now. I mean, that’s part of what you’re doing there.

Joel: Yeah, and I think that’s the point, right, is… you know, a lot of people might look at a company, like, an IKEA or a [unintelligible] like it’s a fast fashion, fast furniture type of company. And yes, we sell for a volume business, right? But our interest is how we create value for the long-term because that’s better for people, it’s better for business, and it’s better for the world, right? Better for sustainability, better for climate, better for all these other factors as well. And it’s interesting how you said as well, because I think it’s the same thing. Even if I look at one person through life stages, it adapts, right? I mean, I have to have multiple kids in different life stages, and we repurpose. But it’s also across the world as well, right? We could design one chair, and you sell it in six different countries because there are six different purposes and six different contexts, or whatever it may be, right? So, say universality, it’s sort of adaptability for it, that it creates that really good efficiency and innovation, but relevance for people through that, too.

Karen: So, you know, I want to move on to kind of the other aspects of your talk that were extremely interesting to me, which is about this kind of consumer segmentation, and we’re starting to talk a little bit about it, but right understanding the importance of recognizing new segments or underdeveloped or underserved segments. So, talk to me a little bit about kind of your approach in that space. It seems like it should be obvious that people that can benefit the business, but you’re doing more than that. So, talk to me a bit about your approach.

Joel: Yeah, and to be very honest, I think as a business, I don’t think we, or many companies, have cracked segmentation as a topic, right, partly because, like, the theory behind it evolves all the time, right? Different businesses are different as well. And I don’t know if there’s a perfect way to—for us, we realized over time is there is no perfect segmentation. It doesn’t exist. And there’s not one type of way of looking at, whether you’re doing, like, ten years strategic direction through to operational attribution in its store, you also can’t do it in the same way because it’s a different [unintelligible] as well. For us at IKEA, we’ve always had the guided theory—and it comes back from our founder decades ago, right—of [unintelligible], but you can define it in many ways. We look at basically, you know, is if you have limited time, space, money, an resource, we have something for you. And that doesn’t mean necessarily, that is, you know, people that have lower incomes; a lot of people with high incomes don’t have much money because [unintelligible] expenditure, right? It’s all about, like, what do you have, and how do we serve you with that? Then looking at things like small spaces, right? Anything that IKEA have, many people enter IKEA when they look at it and say, “I have a mess. I have chaos. How do I clean it up and how do I organize?” That’s why, generally, when you have kids, you go IKEA because your house explodes with stuff. You’re like, how do I keep all of this together? Even more pronounced if you have a smaller space and the need for optimization [unintelligible], and that’s what we obviously have a lot of value-add of. [unintelligible]. So, you also have this long-term view of, if you have, you know, small space, [unintelligible], and resource [unintelligible], but then we all suddenly hit all our stages, right? And all for points of people as well, right? So, from when you’re going to college for the first time, or you go back to school, when you’re leaving home, when you’re having kids for the first time, whatever it may be, as you said, around your example of your story, right, we adapt to your life stages as well. So, it’s not about targeting one person and saying, “How do I get the one person to spend more?” It’s about how do we provide the right thing for more people? And I think we do that intentionally because I think that’s the right thing to do for people. We don’t want to be a consumption society, right, that we’re just, like, pushing stuff into people’s homes. Just because we can is not the right thing to do because you get overconsumption. But it’s more routed for as many people that need it will be there, provided. And so, we’re not—we don’t look at segmentation in a way as to how I just select one and go out which make up these two. And that works, I think, when you’re a house of brands, and you might have to be, like, portfolio optimization through the brands, and therefore you say, like, this brand is for this segment, that brand is for that segment, therefore [unintelligible] capitalize. We’re about reach and enabling more people to be out of that, so have what they [unintelligible] as well.

Karen: It’s like the definition of being mission driven. You know, it’s a point of strength, in my opinion, when I’m hearing you talk about, like, this is what we do for people, you know, you’re leading with the need, rather than leading with the product, and saying, “How can we sell this?” Which is something that a lot of people talk about, but they don’t necessarily execute against. I’m sure you’ve worked in systems or on teams that they went the other way around with their innovation, right? They came up with something great and then tried to figure out how to, you know, reverse engineer, how to make it fit in the consumers life, as opposed to really meeting consumer needs.

Joel: Yeah, look, to be real, we do both, like any organization, and I think the nature of innovation is always both. I think all of us at insights would love the ideal way where it’s like, here’s the need, here’s the product, how do you optimize it, how do you sell it in a very linear innovation process, but that’s not for reality, right? Reality is some you know, designer had a really high idea and thought why do we create that, and then thought about, [unintelligible] insights that serve. For us as well, where we’ve got a long history in our supply manufacturing area, right? We have suppliers that have been with IKEA for decades, right, generations have been there. We have suppliers that have worked on, like, one product for decades. They optimize that and they know that [unintelligible], what do you do with that? So, output is ideas can come for anywhere. They can come from consumers, they can come from competitors, they can come from suppliers, that go for [anyplace], right? And it’s about how to then they can [unintelligible] different starting point, then, how do we make sure we then have the totality of, yes, you’ve got this. For what need does it serve? How does it help the business, and how does it help people? And I think what’s different for us in segmentation, I would look at an innovation, is there’s other companies that work that we are so embedded in the purpose of creating a better everyday life for many people. It’s why so many could, like, you work at IKEA for 30, 35 years, because they believe in it so deeply. And the benefit of being a public—a private company, in many ways, is we can take investment choices, like, look, this might hurt business a little bit, but it’s better for consumer or better for people because we stand on create that everyday life, so that we will always prioritize that. I think through you know how years ago, many companies went through the purpose journey, and many companies, like, oh, what’s my purpose? And they tried to come up with purposes that would save the world. And one of the [unintelligible] retrofitted backwards, right? It was like, actually, these companies just make a lot of money, but how do I find really good purpose because it sounds cool. For us, it’s the reverse. You know, we inherited our jobs. Many of us inherited our jobs. [unintelligible] purpose of IKEA. And we’d let that be [unintelligible] that goes into there. And that’s one of the reasons—I’ve only been here for four years, but it’s one of the reasons [unintelligible] because it’s authentically there. I think we need to do more of that as well. 

Karen: I love that. And I think, yeah, for those of you listening, you can look at the founders’ stories. That was all a part of the presentation that I was fortunate enough to sit in, but it’s all accessible. You can find many of the, kind of, founder story online as well. But what I want to shift to and ask you about is, how does that translate to, you know, the work you do with consumers? Do you carry those values into your research as well? You know, are there things that you are doing that kind of—that feel like they’re a fit to—you have such strong, solid corporate values, is that translating into methodologies and approaches to work?

Joel: What’s interesting at IKEA is—and I could compare it to other companies or businesses that I’ve worked in and seen at other places as well—it’s… number one process, and then I’ll get [unintelligible] process standpoint, I see that this strategy function as well as the data functions, et cetera, and a lot of the reason for that, it’s the starting point of everything that we do is insights, right? So, before we set all of our strategies for the year, we first did together—and the brief that I get every year is, tell me about the world. What’s happening? What do you want to know about the world? There’s [unintelligible]. The brief thing comes, and then we boil that down, right, and say, like, this is what’s happening in the world. This is what’s happening in people’s lives. This is what the needs are, therefore, what’s the implication from us. And then we create our strategies from there. And obviously, we mix the financials and the business requirements, et cetera, right, and then we create strategy from that. And that is the starting point that really happens. And so, points of the year, we gear up towards that. Then whatever priorities we end up landing on to focus on is really based on and where it goes. And combining what people [unintelligible], we wait [unintelligible] come to what opportunity goes through as well. So, [unintelligible] this process is [unintelligible] on this side. From a methodology standpoint, we very much do as well. To give you an example, it’s like the one thing I spoke to you guys—shared with you guys at Yale as well, one of the things that we do across the world is if you go into any IKEA store, you’ll always find that there’s certain areas of the store that are mocked up like somebody’s bedroom or bathroom or living room or whatever it might be, right? Now, the way that we do that is the store coworkers—not agencies, we don’t ask [unintelligible], right, the store coworkers go into people’s homes. We’ve had a couple of them already, so the store, bring the measuring tapes. They look around the home. They figure out how big the houses are, how big dimensions are, how they properly live in that context, right, what their realities are. They get their needs and so forth, then they go back into the store, and we built it, right? And then we put our furniture in there, and so it’s so relevant, too. So, if I live within a couple miles of the store, I go into the store and be like, “Hey, that looks like my house.” Because it is. Because of [unintelligible], right? What’s interesting through there is, if you imagine every store doing that across the world—so we have here 450, 500 [unintelligible] stores, right, [unintelligible], every day—every store doing that, multiple times a year, the amount of coworkers that are interacting with consumers, becomes a lot, right? So, if you just leave that as it is, then you lose all the insight in the coworkers. So, then we have a system called [unintelligible] where we add tech solution, where basically anytime they do it, they put all their videos, their photos, their notes, whatever, into a system, we capture all of it, and then anybody in the world that works for IKEA can see it. So, if I do a store visit in [unintelligible] or in Philadelphia, likewise, can see each other’s store in-home visit. They can see each other’s in-home visits and learn from each other and do it. And then we’ll have our product innovation team sitting in Sweden, designing innovation and designing the next chair and the next sofa, they can learn from the context of everything in each location as well. And the reason why I share that example is, you know, as I said, our mission really is creating a good everyday life for [unintelligible] people, and that starts from understanding what that everyday life is like. I’m not a believer in creating innovation from one part of the world for the rest of the world. We can’t have a few thousand product developers sitting in Sweden thinking they understand how Americans or Brits or, you know, Chinese live. If [unintelligible] seeing it or immersed in it or understand it, right? And so, we have these systems, tools, methodology, that we have to connect all of that together, so that when they’re developing a chair, they understand what it means, and [unintelligible] these different contexts around the world as well. So, it matters very much designed based on [unintelligible]. Or the other point, and then I’ll finish off there, is that our need for a foresight, looking forward to new direction. It’s really about helping the world get better, help your [unintelligible] lives get better. We need to understand what are homes going to be like in ten years from now? What’s the world going to be like in ten years from now? And how do we influence that, how do we enable that, and our own methods [unintelligible] develop the insights to do that as well.

Karen: There’s so much that I love about what you just said. As a qualitative researcher, of course, it makes sense that you would be going into people’s homes. I love that you’re, you know, you’re kind of retail staff, your stores, are going into people’s homes as well. And I really do believe that ethnography in general is going to be even more and more important in our work because we have to stay connected to how people are actually living, not how AI thinks we’re living, not how we say we’re living, you know, the whole say-do gap. I just think that—I just feel like—anyway, that’s my two cents in all of this is ethnography is just going to become more and more important. So, I love thinking about how you’re doing it.

Joel: I think [unintelligible] podcast, Karen.

Karen: Exactly, exactly.

Joel: [crosstalk] roles of AI, there is… I’ll leave it there. There’s so much there that we get to figure out.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. All right, well, we’ll do a part two at some point. But let’s talk about this foresight because I do want to go there, and I think that a lot of the brands that are listening, that’s one area where, you know, some companies have great, you know, teams in place for this, others they barely have an insights team, let alone insights that are able to feed any kind of strategic planning in this future thinking. So, talk to me a little bit about how you incorporate that into your practice there.

Joel: So, if I think about a few things, organizationally, number one, we have the insights people in our team in the different business units. We call it, like, product development, communication development, et cetera, retail, and so forth. But we also have a good, decently-sized team based on strategy, [unintelligible] strategy. Because as the role of franchisor is a lot of us sort of protecting and developing a future of where we go as business, and enabling franchisees to [unintelligible] there as well. So, I have a good sized and a very, very capable and a very talented strategic insights team that are super outside the box. You know, my mandate for them is spend as little of time in the building as you can, and as much time outside the building as you can. Because you can’t figure out what’s happening in the world and represent the outside in, if, you know, living in the outside of IKEA. So, they spend a lot of time outside, connecting with brilliant institutes, you know, smart things. We’ve already spotted a lot of things, looking into the reality of how people they, you know, there’s so much, so many organizations that are looking for, like, the future of urbanization in 2030, and how I develop this city or that city and so forth, picking up signals from different parts of the world. This city is doing that, and maybe other city will start later, and just picking up all of those transit signals we can bring back in as well. So, we have a good team that’s dedicated to that, that’s focused on bringing that through, both from a strategic insights standpoint to enable the whole [unintelligible] from, where should we be focused, where should we grow, how do we disrupt ourselves so that somebody else doesn’t disrupt us, right? Like, what are those potential risks and what—it’s like, what if XYZ happens? What would we do about it, and how would we get ahead of that so we can influence things happening as well. So, there’s an organizational part, there’s a process part, as I said, through the yearly planning and the strategic planning, it always starts with insights, and we always go back to that every year, and evolve it and adapt it every year as well. And honestly, at the moment, that was like, every month, given, like, probably like yourself as well, every week, something happens at the moment, right? I go into a meeting and I walk out, and something else has happened in the world within that [beat] right, things changed. So, it’s ridiculous how rapid it is, right? So, strategic insight isn’t just, like, once for ten years. It’s like an ongoing, living ecosystem of evolving those insights as well. And all the way through into so what, right? Because anything for a foresight—and look, many foresight, so like, do you know, the world, it’s going to get more economically challenged, sure, it’s going to get more technological, and it’s like, great. So, what? I know that. We all know that, right? But I think where it works really well for us, where we have done it well—we don’t always get it perfect—but we have done it well is bringing the insight into the so what, now what, [unintelligible], right? Getting operationally minded people in the business who are super operators in the day-to-day to be part of the process. So, like now, I’m seeing this, and in my operation mind, that means that. And this is what it means in ten years, but this is what we need to start doing now, already about it. And how do we start activating and moving? Otherwise, it stays very theoretical as well.

Karen: I’m reminded that I would love to talk to your colleague who was with us for IIEX Europe, one of the women that joined us on stage was Rania Wahdan from Expo City Dubai, and she was talking about, kind of, leading insights for a very future-focused city like that. I’m thinking of your strategic insights team, and I’m like, “Mmm, wonder if they’ve been to Dubai.” So, [laugh] let’s spend some time there. They have, of course they have. So, you know, that’s great. And actually, that, to me, seems like one of the most intriguing types of insights there is, so thank you so much for sharing that. And I think it probably would be aspirational for other insights teams to develop that function if they don’t already have it. It’s pretty, pretty cool to see how that operates. Anything that you are—and again, nothing proprietary—but anything interesting that’s come out of that work that you can kind of point us to that type of work, pointed out this specific type of trend, or that might have led to something else? Anything you can share?

Joel: Yeah, look, I think from a directional standpoint, it’s no surprise that whenever we do something around foresights of direction, either for us, it typically lands in somewhere related to [unintelligible]. And the reason probably for that, as in the world, right, we’re going through such change from a climate standpoint, right, and biodiversity, et cetera, it’s going through such an evolution. And then, as a business, as a company, we care about so much. We care about what resources we use and what impact you have or should or shouldn’t have, right? Or how do we play a key role in helping in that as well? So, a lot of it is, you know, what happens if XYZ happens, you know, we produce, we [unintelligible] we produce a lot of good, we sell a lot of good, et cetera. What happens if [unintelligible] changed in the future, right? What happens if climate changes? What does that happen to? What does that cause on [unintelligible], right, all of these kind of what-ifs around those areas? At the end of the day, we’re a company that sells a lot of [unintelligible], if you think about it, right? It’s chairs, tables, beds, whatever it may be. It’s raw materials shaped into different sizes and colors and so forth. We’re not a service industry—yes, we’re a retail company, right, but a lot of it is behind [unintelligible]. So, for us, it’s a lot around, like, where is that going and how do we help that? How do we influence that? How do we be a force for good in that? Or how do we not just take the [unintelligible] in that as well? And I think it’s interesting where the world is going on the topic of sustainability, right? Some places are going up and down, and some are faltering or wavering and so forth. They’re realizing they can’t make [unintelligible] and so forth. We’re just like, no, we’re going after it. Even if a government says yes or no, we’re going after it, even if another company is not meeting the targets, we’re going after it. And if we want to do that, if you want to be a force for good, you often therefore need to have a leadership mindset. You often therefore need to say, how do I think ahead, how do I get uncomfortable, how do I disrupt? Even if somebody’s not doing it, I’m going to do it, and I’m going to lean into this spot. I think that’s where a lot of foresight goes into for us particularly. And then you can think about as well, I suppose, secondly, we operate in cities, in areas, right? Think about something like mobility. A lot of cities are talking about having car-free cities, right? Now, if you try to go to an IKEA store and buy a massive [unintelligible] cupboard or a bed, and you don’t have a car to take it home, how do you do that at a car-free city, right? So, you’ve got to start thinking differently about transportation, logistics, fulfillment, et cetera, as well, store location, all those kind of designs that we have. Nothing that’s unique to us; it’s just a retail industry, that’s just what’s happening, right, to cities as well. Which can be a challenge or it can be opportunity, but they’re the kind of various [unintelligible]. I would be naive to think that other companies like us are no are looking into it as well to build that.

Karen: I love those examples. Thank you. And it actually has me, you know, looking towards one of the last questions I wanted to ask you here, which is about managing, managing not just change, which is where I thought we might be going, but also managing the ambiguity of that future mindset and that future thinking. You know, you talk about leadership, kind of the importance of it, of having this mindset, to not only use foresight, but think through the what-ifs and the scenario testing and scenario planning and all of that, but how do you upskill your team to get these, this mindset, this kind of openness and this comfort with the… uncomfortable, ambiguous, unknown future.

Joel: Look I think there’s two factors. There’s how do you upskill my team, and then how do you enable the receivers of your insights to receive it and do something about it, right? And I think they’re two [unintelligible] opportunities [unintelligible] as well. [unintelligible], honestly, what was interesting a couple of years ago is we tried to change the culture a little bit. And what I inherited the function, I inherited, and part of our assignment, like, what the company says we need to do, this is why we exist, was to provide insights. I looked at it, and I was like, providing insights means somebody’s asked you a question and you’re reacting to what [unintelligible]. But I honestly believe, as an insights function as an industry, we should know so much about what consumers are going through, what competitors are doing, what [unintelligible] happening on the street, what the businesses is going through. We’re a knowledge function. We sit on so much stuff, right, that we should be the ones that are, like, anticipating what could happen, looking at it, challenging status quo to say, “I see this. Should we do that?” Right? Because if [unintelligible] many functions of the business, where, if in marketing, or retail, supply, whatever, there’s so much [unintelligible] like that, how do I deliver what I have today? As insights, we get the benefit of being embedded, also removed, to a degree. Where we cover the whole [unintelligible], we step back a little bit and we look at the forest in the totality, right, not just seeing the weeds, and say, like, what if? And so, changing the culture of not just you answer a question to your counterparts, but you come with the question, and give the question, and anticipate a challenge back. Better open people’s minds, I think it was a really big opening for the team because then it gives the permission to think bigger and think creatively. Then at the same time, as I said, if the team is sitting behind the desk of that laptop that every day, answering questions or doing [unintelligible] tests, they’re never going to think bigger. And so, for me, it’s always being spend as much time outside of the office as you possibly can, right? If you’re immersed with consumers, if you do industry business, if you spend time with suppliers—one of the biggest thing we do as well is send our teams into suppliers at factories, so you learn how things are happening and what’s happening, right, because that’s where it lives as well. Immerse into that reality every day, and you will feel the need, you’ll feel the opportunity, and you’ll have the passion to break it in. Then once you have the permission and the passion, then it’s the skill of, how do you communicate it, and how do you embed it, how you ingest it. And that’s when it’s all about—you know, insights people are very good at the content and the knowledge, right? I want to have best insight possible. What I always tell the team is, I don’t need the best insight. I need the insight that’s good enough because the best insight that you don’t execute well is gone. That [unintelligible]. For us, it’s about having a good enough insight that you focus so much time on it, betting on deploying and activating and changing and helping people to do something about it. Because consumers don’t need a better insight; they need a better solution, and the only way to give them a better solution is to help a business to actually do something about it. So, you ask a lot of time through those parts and real activation, storytelling, communicating, relationship-building all that stuff, knowing the business right, insights people are great technical people, but if they don’t know the business, if they don’t know how the supply chain works, if they don’t know how retail coworkers work in the day-to-day, they don’t know how to execute the insight. They don’t have empathy for the receiver. So, it’s not just, you know, insights functions typically upskilling the technical, but for us, honestly, I think we spend more of our time upskilling their business knowledge. Because we hire people that are great technically skilled, right? And honestly, insights isn’t that difficult as a competence area. It’s doable, right? It’s teachable. The immersing and understanding the reality of your end-user of the insight is where I think of the difference [unintelligible].

Karen: That’s fantastic. And I’m pretty sure that there’s a lot of insights professionals listening that are like, “That’s the kind of company I want to work for” because the way you described what their day in the life might be, it sounds like people would be inspired. It sounds like they’d be—you know, that kind of immersion would free up the synapses to actually, you know, come up with ideas or turn those insights into something that’s fully usable. And very, very inspirational, Joel. I so appreciate it and just that you’re here with me sharing. Is there anything that we didn’t touch on that you were really hoping that we would touch on today?

Joel: No, you triggered me on AI [unintelligible]. It sticks in my mind now, so we’re going to come back to that at some point later. But the only thing I’ll say on that one, and I’d love to get your perspective, whether it’s now or at some point, is, how do we do AI, but keep the heart for the hero and keep the reality of that and keep empathy?

Karen: Yeah.

Joel: Because the way that we working as an industry is a lot about—you know, thinking about Covid, a lot of us, how do research from our laptops? Let’s use social media to understand what people need. That’s great. There’s a role for it. But I’m lucky enough to have started my career, not yesterday, right, and not in the digital era. That makes me sound a little [unintelligible] digital era, where you just go and [unintelligible] in consumers homes, see [unintelligible] even go shopping with them, and understand and feel the reality of who you’re trying to take care of and serve. And I feel the days, when we’re bringing insights people in the industry, we’re recruiting people with great technical skill, like, AI skill… but then [unintelligible] for what are you trying to achieve? What are you trying—that I think are probably [unintelligible] ethnography part there, like, now it’s the so what, and understanding it and empathizing. Because people don’t do things because, [unintelligible] do things, because they have empathy for it. And I think how we could do that, I think that’s one of our biggest opportunities in this industry, is how to balance that and get that right as well.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I… I still think, even if I think about my very digitally-connected family, you know, all young adults now, but pretty tapped in, and you know, we’re the family that when they when everybody comes home—which, right now, I have a house full—when everybody comes home, and there’s, you know, young adults on phones, you know, TV on iPad, going laptop nearby, and we are all super connected, I’m sure it would be heartwarming to a team at IKEA to see how, you know, the sectional sofa, everyone is flopped upon, they’re sharing with one another what’s happening on the phones. You know, there’s legs overlapping with other legs, and there’s a whole lot of connection happening, even in that digital space, which people wouldn’t know if they don’t see it by getting into people’s homes. So yeah, I think that is probably, in my opinion, the number one way to just stay connected during this era is by just seeing how human beings are interacting with it and how they’re using it. And you might have my daughter in the kitchen, who’s worked with ChatGPT on perfecting her chocolate chip cookie recipe because she doesn’t like the recipes out there, but ChatGPT is helping make it her own. So she’s, you know, she’s using AI in her way, in her very Gen-Z way, it’s just all, it’s all visible within the homes. So, anyway. So, I’m sure your team is going to have more intel than many, many others out there because your work is largely for the home. So, thank you so much for your time and for your opinions today. Yeah, I loved having you. I loved this conversation.

Joel: Thanks for the questions. They are good points. They’re good topics.

Karen: Yeah.

Joel: Thank you.

Karen: You’re welcome. Excellent, excellent. And thank you to our listeners. Thank you to Big Bad Audio—for which I should now be saying, Big Bad Audio, thanks for the video assist as well. And of course, to you, Joel, really with gratitude for saying yes to my invitation. So, we’ll see you all soon for another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. Bye-bye, y’all.