IKEA and Linnaeus University renews strategic collaboration for future talents and exploration of life at home

For almost eight years, IKEA and Linnaeus University have collaborated on the project The Bridge, focusing on Life at Home and the various aspects of the production process. In addition, the collaboration has also included other projects such as IKEA contributions to Linnaeus University's master programme Innovation through Business, Engineering and Design. IKEA and Linnaeus University have now agreed to continue developing 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 Småland culture, the strengths and focus areas of Linnaeus University and the IKEA challenges of being truly affordable for the many people, reaching and interacting with the many, and enabling a positive impact on people, society and the planet.

"Our ambition is to increase our focus towards collaborations with students and at Linnaeus University we hope to find untapped sources of talent, knowledge and capability." 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 collaboration, the findings from the evaluations of the existing collaboration have been a source of inspiration and 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