SMAU Stockholm 2026 | Interview with Raffaele Giovinazzi, IKEA

At SMAU Stockholm 2026 we interviewed Raffaele Giovinazzi, Innovation Ventures Leader, IKEA and we asked him how do they work with start ups and what is, from his point of view, the biggest challenge in accelerating innovation: “At Innovation Ventures Inter IKEA we support the business to accelerate innovation and we do by supporting them with partnership and collaboration with startup or accademia, with the scale up industrialization and with venture investment, because we are the corporate venture capital of the Inter IKEA. Normally we collaborate with the startups through specific transformation area around next generation or more affordable sustainable material, food and resilience. Another transformation area is transform to a circular value chain and another is reform the customer experience and finally improve life at home. Through this transformation area we collaborate with the startups that can propose solutions that could address the specific problem statement that we have in this transformation areas. I think one of the biggest challenges to accelerate innovation is the scale up industrialization. Quite often innovation does not die in the lab, but dies in the factory, because the scale up, let's say, validate a concept at pilot scale can be normally done, but is more difficult to prove the technology also at industrial scale. This is what we think that since day one scale up and industrialization needs to be considered in the design of the new solution”.