It is Jacob’s passion for supporting the development of children that “gets him out of bed in the morning” and was a primary motivation for joining Stokke. “I am driven by the fact that I have an opportunity, as I did during the first 20 years of my career, to actually make a positive difference with parents and their children and to help families get something meaningful from their products,” he says.

This impassioned commitment was a key factor behind Stokke’s appointment, – not only did it fit with the company’s brand values, but it is also a passion Jacob has translated to the bottom line. He was President of Lego Education between 2010-15 and during this period, helped steer Lego’s education business from a decade of no growth and breaking even, to a strong five-year high-growth trajectory coupled with high profitability.    

Jacob also built a team at Lego to implement innovation and a digitalization strategy – two areas that Stokke is looking to bolster as it sets it sights on doubling its €200 million size in the next three to four years. There are already signs the strategy is working, with the company delivering record results in 2020 with pre-tax profits rising 75 per cent.

He believes the key to being a relevant brand in the long run is innovation and he wants the company to develop new ideas on how it can engage parents, to make sure they understand more about what is needed to develop a child in those very critical early days, weeks, and months of their lives.

“We need to make sure we are leveraging digital insights and data much more effectively; generating the right kind of innovation; making sure that we’re doing the right kind of marketing to engage consumers. They are going to be critical enablers of success in the future, much more so than they have been in the up until this point.” says Jacob