Though not always a household name, Ingvar Kamprad, who passed away on 27 January, changed millions of households over the past 75 years.

Mr. Kamprad was the founder of IKEA, the ubiquitous furniture store that so many of us have visited and experienced. He founded IKEA in Sweden when he was only 17 years old. Now, the company has a global footprint of over 400 stores in nearly 50 countries.

And these establishments aren’t simply “big box” retail outlets — most of the IKEA facilities are over 37,161 square metres (400,000 square feet) with the largest in Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi, South Korea, measuring 57,100 square metres (614,619 square feet).

I’m not going to give you a history lesson about IKEA; you can find all that easily enough through the company’s own corporate website and other sources of reference. What we’re going to focus on instead, is what kind of impact this company has had on real estate investment, logistics, supply chain and employm