Leading by design - The IKEA story by Bertil Torekull

Ikea was founded by Ingvar Kamprad in a little town in Sweden called Almhult. Ikea HQ remains there till this day. There are 150 stores and growing worldwide but they all retain the Ikea spirit.

1. Reaching good results with limited resources.
They strive to produce the best product (low price, good quality) in the most cost efficient way.
Their products reaches the the masses looking for stylish, good looking, quality furniture at a low price.

2. Responsibilty.
They strive to be responsible in every sense. To their workers, to their producers, to thier consumers and to society.

3. Doing it a different way.
By always asking why we are doing this or that, we can find new paths. By refusing to accept a pateern simply because it is established, we make progress.

The religion of consumerism

THE ECONOMY AS RELIGION: THE DYNAMICS OF CONSUMER CULTURE
Dell deChant

excerpts:
The great metamyth of postmodern culture is the myth of success and affluence, gained through a proper relationship with the Economy, and revealed in the ever expanding material prosperity of society and through the ever-increasing acquisition and consumption of products.

Secondary myths are narratives about the masters of business and finance; the stars of movies, sports, and the music industry; persons who win lotteries, make fortunes e-trading, win gameshows and then “live large” as a consequence of their success.

Religion in postmodern society is that collection of culturally embedded phenomena that mediate individual and collective relationships with the sacred power of the Economy through acquisition-consumption-disposal. It is not enough to simply acquire and consume objects and images. One must do both and one must also dispose of the objects and images for the sacred to be experienced. The entire process must be completed, for only then (in the cyclical manner that is elemental to cosmological systems) can the process begin again. The quicker the process is completed and then begun again, the greater is one’s experience of the sacred, and hence the greater one’s power in the socio-religious system. For this reason, popular culture venerates the person who is able to keep up with the trends in fashion, who is able to acquire a new car every year, who buys a new house, replaces appliances on a regular basis, acquires the most innovative type of computer, and so on.

Thus, because the sacred is the Economy, and religion is the process of acquisition-consumption-disposal which engages one with the sacred through myth and ritual, then the non-religious would be that which disengages one from the process. This would be production.

Because production (labor/work) prevents one from acquisition-consumption-disposal, it is the antithesis of the sacred. Production has thus become functionally profane, where in earlier times, it was functionally sacred (the old Protestant work-ethic, which vested religious merit in economic production); and acquisition and consumption, which were once religiously restricted, if not actually profane, have become sacred.

When I am working, I am not consuming, yet my working/profane endeavors bring me the substance necessary for me to consume. I thus sacrifice time and energy in the profane realm for the sake of the Economy; not because I find any particular satisfaction in contributing to production (and certainly not because of any religious merit per se) but because I am equipping myself to better perform my religious duty. My sacrifice of time and energy in profane endeavors (labor) rewards me with ritual resources (money), which then allows me to participate in the sacred process of acquisition-consumption-disposal.



So if shopping is our religion, our malls must be our cathedrals, temples and shrines. When we are performing our consuming rituals at our temples, it brings us closer to our sacred economy.

How do we decide what to consume that makes us feel that we are pious and commited? Does the product sell us a greater vision?
The product must offer us the promise land, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It must not simply be a product with an end use but what, how will its use exalt you.

Woman I admire - Muccia Prada

Miuccia Prada is one of fashion industry's leaders. She uses clothes to express her ideas. Although she finds it hard coming as an intellectual with a Phd in political science to come to terms that she is a fashion designer.

Prada manages to convert a private obsesssion with things like kitsch, uniforms, wallpaper, computers, and even trash into an international symbol of cool. And,
Prada doesn't sew, knot, sketch. She is not that kind of designer. Instead she surrounds herself with talented people whose job is to translate her themes, concepts, and -especially- her taste into clothes that bear the Prada name.

Often, she will focus on a colour, a texture, a memory. Once she locks in her seasonal passion, she can tell her people what to do and show them how to do it. An unusual approach, but it has made her one of the most influential designers in the world.

Prada offers far more than clothes, she is trying to sell people a better, hipper version of themselves. She doesn't simply sell five hundred dollar scarves; she sells the world view that comes with buying such objects.

Here are a few quotes of Muccia that I obtained from various sources.

“I realise how powerful and important clothes are, especially for women,” she says. “They have to be useful for your life, of course, but they must also express your individual sentiment.” That Prada accepts that all fashion is role-play is what makes her such a force. She understands that the job of the truly ground-breaking designer is to decide on the roles, dress them and then present them in such a way that people all over the world want to join the cast.

Prada realised that choosing the inappropriate is what moves creativity forward. In the 19th century, impressionism was seen as inappropriate. So was surrealism, some 40 years later. Likewise, Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. The list is long and important. These are the people who have changed our thinking for ever.

“If you have something to tell, you must do it through an idea. For me, that is always through clothes,” she says. “This leads us into considerations of imagination, desire, the longing to be beautiful and the obsessions of narcissism. These are big subjects.”

Prada herself makes an unlikely éminence grise. She is neither dowdy, nor overwhelmingly chic. In fact, she looks entirely normal. Her figure is that of a woman in her fifties. Her hair is cut like most other women’s hair. She rarely wears make-up. Contrast her with another Italian icon, Donatella Versace, and you realise that she is a fashion outsider. Certainly, she avoids socialising with most other designers and runs a mile from social events. As she said to me, years ago: “I am a wife and a mother” — she has two teenage boys — “and I have many more interests than fashion. Fashion is just my job.”

More indepth read.
http://www.michaelspecter.com/pdf/prada.pdf