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Anders Dahlvig was born in 1957 in Sweden, and worked for IKEA from 1983 to 2009, the last ten years of which as president and CEO. As CEO he received various awards for IKEA's work to promote sustainability and diversity including the Swedish award for Good Environmental Leadership in 2002, the US Foreign Policy Association's Global Social Responsibility Award in 2006, and the Oslo Business for Peace Award in 2009.
In Dahlvig's first book The IKEA Edge , he tells the story of how IKEA matured from an entrepreneurial start-up to a leader in the furniture industry. He recounts his 26-year career at the company and what he learned along the way. In his rise from store manager to president, Dahlvig developed the unique vision he relied on to lead IKEA through good times and bad, by combining traditional business goals like profit and growth with the progressive interests of social responsibility and environmental stewardship. The IKEA Edge aims to prove that these objectives, which are usually viewed as polar opposites, can actually work wonders together.
Dahlvig has a BA degree in business from Lund University, Sweden, and a MA degree in Economics from University of California, Santa Barbara. He now holds several company board assignments, including Kingfisher plc, H&M, Oriflame SA, The New Wave Group, and Axel Johnson AB. Dahlvig is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences, such as GDI International Conference on Retailing, UN Global Compact Summit, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Greenpeace Annual Conference, ECR Europe, and World Retail Congress.
What was your motivation in writing The IKEA Edge ?
When you are in an operative demanding role, such as I had been, there is too little time for reflection. Having left IKEA I felt a need to reflect on my experience, and the book is the result of this. I feel strongly about the company's role as a contributor to...