IKEA. Strategic competences and capabilities

231 stores in 24 countries, 522 million visitors during one year and nearly20 billion euros in sales make IKEA the most successful furniture retailerin the world (IKEA, 2007; Sloan, 2007). In addition this is achievedwithout taking advantage of people or the environment, as one of IKEA'spolicies is to have an overall positive impact on both (Barner, 2007).But why is the Sweden-based company so successful? And how did itbecome that way? Which strategic issues did IKEA face? What are thevalues, resources and competences the company bases its operations on?In order to answer these questions this work uses two strategicframeworks. For the historic development of the company the 'dynamiccompetence and capability framework' is used. Furthermore the competitiveedge IKEA has in comparison to its concurrence is explained withthe 'static competences and capabilities framework', which is based on acompany's special set of resources. Within this latter framework there isan emphasis on knowledge as a fundamental resource and on knowledgeintegration, which is separately discussed.The remainder of this work is therefore structured as follows. In thesecond section the frameworks of static and dynamic strategic competencesand capabilities are explained. Afterwards, in the third part, thedynamic model is adopted to IKEA by applying it to some of the mostimportant 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 capabilityframework. Eventually the integration of knowledge at IKEA is examined.The analysis finishes with a conclusion revising the main points.