The IKEA Innovation Community

The breakout rooms were supposed to help. After presentations to IKEA's innovation community, Justyna Baber split participants into smaller groups so they could talk. The format felt forced, and people did not like it. She stopped using it. Back in the main room, with space for an open conversation, the microphones and chat began to come alive.

It is a modest experiment with a useful lesson: participation has to work for the people involved. In this episode of Innovation Rockstars, Baber explains how she helped build an innovation community across IKEA teams and developed collaborations with academic partners. The aim was to make it easier for people to connect, share experience and learn. A new channel or an impressive event was only useful if it helped that happen.

Find the need before choosing the platform

Baber came to innovation from consumer and market insights, where she had experienced a strong community across different IKEA organizations. After changing roles, she could not find the equivalent place to connect with people and projects in innovation.

Conversations with colleagues showed that others felt the same need. Some worked in innovation teams; others were interested in the subject but did not know how to join the conversation. A small group began exploring what a community could offer.

Baber points out the irony of trying to build it alone:

“That would be quite ironic to do a collaborative effort on my own.”

The group discussed the purpose, audience, benefits and ways of communicating. Senior management was involved along the way, so support had developed by the time the first get-together took place. That initial event gave people across teams time to explain who they were and what they were working on.

A shared portfolio view could help the business see its initiatives. The community addressed a different need: knowing the people behind those initiatives and having a way to discuss what they were learning. For distributed R&D teams, that is often the difference between knowing a project exists and knowing whom to call about it.

Let interest be the entry point

The community did not restrict membership to people with innovation in their job titles. Baber points out that colleagues can do substantial innovation work without belonging to a formally named innovation team.

The common ground was an interest in innovation at IKEA. That made the group inclusive while giving its conversations enough focus. A community for everyone about everything would struggle to offer the same sense of shared purpose.

Baber distinguishes a community from a communication channel. A channel can distribute information, but belonging and a shared identity require more. She wants participants to talk with each other, with facilitators helping the conversation rather than supplying every message.

People also arrive with different levels of confidence. Some attend an event simply to see whether the topics and atmosphere suit them. Others contribute quickly. Baber describes commitment developing over time as people find something useful and feel comfortable taking part.

That is especially important at work. An informal atmosphere can help, but it remains a professional environment. People need to feel able to ask questions, make a joke or admit what they do not know without worrying that participation will work against them.

Use what people already use

The team chose to begin with existing tools. Microsoft Teams provided a channel colleagues could access without adopting another platform. An intranet hub held the content. Monthly online meetups featured projects, initiatives and research, while longer get-togethers offered another format for connection.

Online participation was a deliberate choice for a global organization. A physical event would make it harder for some colleagues, including those in Asia, to join. The design needed to match the people the community hoped to include.

Baber recalls the temptation to launch a dedicated digital platform. Starting smaller helped the team learn that the familiar channel was convenient. A separate destination would have required a continuing effort to persuade people to log in.

The same willingness to adjust led to abandoning the breakout rooms. Once the group found a more natural way to talk, questions, comments and banter became part of the meetings. Those observations gave the facilitators useful feedback about what members valued.

Baber is careful about claiming impact. She can point to learning, sharing and connections. She expects those relationships to influence innovation, but does not present a direct line from a community conversation to a particular launched product.

Outside perspectives need a worthwhile experience, too

Baber brings a similar approach to academic collaboration. She describes working with students from Delft University of Technology and Hyper Island on ideas connected with the future of retail.

She cautions against expecting every collaboration to produce the next breakthrough. The interaction itself reveals what younger people prioritize, how they approach a question and which possibilities interest them. Their lack of involvement in corporate politics can make the exchange particularly refreshing.

“They just say what they think.”

Making that exchange useful for students requires preparation. Baber works with lecturers and program managers to support their learning, and sees this coordination as dedicated work rather than something project managers should squeeze into the margins.

Her favorite recent moment in the interview comes from watching a community get-together unfold from behind the scenes. Busy organizing it, she could see the questions, energy and appreciation in the chat. People were finding a reason to take part.

That is the standard she keeps returning to. Understand whom the community serves and what those people gain from it. Start simply, pay attention to how they respond and keep changing what does not work. The conversation becomes valuable when people have something to bring and a reason to return.