They definitely are an innovation company.
Depending on your viewpoint, it's either insanely brilliant or morally bankrupt: the vast majority of Ikea's revenue goes to the INGKA Foundation, a charity which ostensible supports 'innovation in the field of architecture', but only gives 0.2% of its total equity to charitable causes each year.
It makes the fairly standard tax avoidance measures carried out by tech companies like Apple or Vodafone look amateur by comparison!
According to Wikipedia, the royalties -- 3% of the revenue or about €630M -- are taxed, but the company receiving the royalties claims €590M in operating expenses paid out to another company (owned by the same people). Together, those two companies pay about €19M in taxes.
Apart from the royalties, lots of money goes into that infamous "non-profit", I'll quote from the Wikipedia page: The net profit of IKEA Group (which does not include Inter IKEA systems) in fiscal year 2009 (after paying franchise fees to Inter IKEA systems) was €2.538 billion on sales of €21.846 billion. Because INGKA Holding is owned by the nonprofit INGKA Foundation, none of this profit is taxed. The foundation's nonprofit status also means that the Kamprad family cannot reap these profits directly, but the Kamprads do collect a portion of IKEA sales profits through the franchising relationship between INGKA Holding and Inter IKEA Systems.
Regarding the non-profit: estimated net worth of $36B, most of the Group's profit is spent on investments, the foundation expects to spend €45 million on charitable giving in 2010 (the slightly smaller Gates foundation spent $1.5B in 2005).
ps this is exactly the same sort of scam (double Irish rather than dutch sandwich) used by Google/HP/MSFT/Dell and every other company operating in Europe
Setting up holding companies in EU to pay minimal tax is standard practice: creating a 'charitable organisation' absolutely isn't. Ikea is a very unique, and in some ways innovative, example of creative accounting.