2026-10-27
Ingvar Kamprad: Selling 'Turning Screws' as a Weekend Ritual — How a Swedish Farm Boy Built IKEA with Sawed-Off Table Legs and a $1 Hot Dog
Ranked #41 on the 100 Product Managers Who Changed the World: Ingvar Kamprad (OVR 88.30 — Business 94, Insight 90, Vision 88, Scale 88, Taste 85, Origin 85). Starting from a stony farm in southern Sweden at age 17, he realized traditional furniture retailers were charging customers to ship empty air. With flat-pack boxes, self-serve warehouses, one-way showroom mazes, and the 'IKEA Effect,' he turned customer labor into a global retail empire.
