There’s much to admire about IKEA….though assembly of their products is my weak point and a number of Ikea items have ended in the lake together with my golf clubs. 

Here are the summarised 10 points to the book on founder, Ingvar Kamprad (courtesy of David Sanra) - I suspect many of them are admiral traits for any founder led biz…and note #9 particularly.

1. A demon in me says I have so much to do. I am never satisfied. Something tells me what I’m doing at the moment has to be done better tomorrow.

2. The day he is free of IKEA, life for him will no longer be worth living. He loves it, always wants to lie as close to it as possible, and never tires of improving it. 

3. The feeling of having finished something is an effective sleeping pill. A person who retires feeling that he has done his bit will quickly wither away. A company that feels that it has reached its goal will quickly stagnate and lose its vitality.

4. I have not been able to avoid severe losses. Both fiascoes and triumphs have marked the history of the business.

5. Selling things became an obsession. Trading was in my blood.

6. We push cost awareness at all levels with almost manic frenzy.

7. Behind this multinational tycoon is a country boy with a fierce sense of being an underdog.

8. He has a peasants distrust of a favorable destiny that keeps his feet on the ground.

9. It was to be one of Ingvar’s great sorrows that business made him neglect his three sons as they grew up. He had done everything to make up for it since, but everyone with children knows that childhood does not allow itself to be reconquered.

10. For thus have the laws been since the birth of IKEA:

-A good cash reserve must always be ensured.

-All property must be owned.

-All expansion is to be largely self-financed.

-There shall be no boasting.

Look at those basic nuts and bolts. They have held up the wagon on a journey lasting half a century and are not the slightest bit rusty.