IKEA's flat-pack model was invented by accident

In 1956, an IKEA employee named Gillis Lundgren was struggling to fit a table into a car for delivery and suggested removing the legs. Ingvar Kamprad realised that flat packaging allowed customers to transport furniture themselves, massively reducing shipping and storage costs. The IKEA model — self-assembly, flat-pack, warehouse-style stores — wasn't a strategic insight but a practical fix to a logistics problem. The company has replicated this principle across everything: customers pick their own items, load their own trolleys, and build their own furniture, each step offloading cost onto the buyer.

Source: Torekull, Leading by Design: The IKEA Story (1999)