A Q&A with Barbara Martin Coppola, IKEA Retail’s chief digital officer.
June 04, 2021
Employees search for "Click & Collect" goods ordered online for contactless pickup at an IKEA store in Duesseldorf, Germany on January 12, 2021.Rolf Vennenbernd/picture alliance via Getty Images
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Summary. How does going digital change a legacy retail brand? According to Barbara Martin Coppola, CDO at IKEA Retail, it’s a challenge of remaining fundamentally the same company while doing almost everything differently. In this Q&A, Martin Coppola talks about how working in tech for 20 years prepared her for this challenge, why giving customers control over their data is good business, and how to stay focused on the core mission when you’re changing everything else.
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What does it mean for one of the world’s most recognizable retail brands to go digital? For almost 80 years, IKEA has been in the very analogue business of selling its distinct brand of home goods to people. Three years ago, IKEA Retail (Ingka Group) hired Barbara Martin Coppola — a veteran of Google, Samsung, and Texas Instruments — to guide the company through a digital transformation and help it enter the next era of its history. HBR spoke with Martin Coppola about the particular challenge of transformation at a legacy company, how to sustain your culture when you’re changing almost everything, and how her 20 years in the tech industry prepared her for this task.
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Thomas Stackpole is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review.
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How to develop a winning strategy—and put it to work.
Read more on Strategy or related topics Technology and analytics, Digital transformation and Retail and consumer goods
