Goran Seifert

Goran Seifert's first love was not business. It was technology.

​

As a teenager in Sweden, he was fascinated by mechanics, building car models and reading car magazines. At sixteen, during the Cold War, he joined a government-sponsored glider programme. Sweden needed pilots, and young boys dreamed of flying fighter jets. Within a year, Goran was flying solo thousands of metres above the ground.

​

That passion led him to study aeronautical engineering at KTH. It turned out to be a disappointment. "Too much maths, too little excitement," he recalled. One summer, a friend studying architecture at ETH Zurich invited him to sit in on some lectures. He loved it. For a moment, he thought he had found his true calling.

 

Life had other plans. His parents were much older when he was born, and both became ill while he was still in university. As an only child, he felt he could not leave Sweden. Looking back, he believes he would probably have studied in Switzerland if circumstances had been different.

​

By the time his parents passed away, one after the other, he had made up his mind. He wanted to leave Sweden, see the world and build a life beyond Scandinavia.

 

Even before graduation, Goran was entrepreneurial. He imported used company cars from Belgium and sold them in Sweden for a profit. He later joined a small Swiss start-up that developed radar systems to protect ships in harbours from intruders. The work was interesting, but he felt that if he wanted a truly international career, he needed to join a large multinational company.

 

In 1980, Philips gave him that opportunity.

 

He joined the Dutch giant's telecommunications division and immediately found himself in a very different culture. The Dutch were direct and confrontational; the Swedes preferred harmony and consensus.

 

"In Sweden, if someone disagrees with you in a meeting, you feel the relationship is damaged. In Holland, people fight in the meeting and put their arm around you afterwards."

​

Philips invested heavily in young talent. In his first year, Goran was selected for an elite management programme modelled after Harvard Business School. He was the only foreigner in a class of twelve. The company spent heavily on his development, exposing him to economics, investments, sales and international projects.

 

Soon afterwards, Philips sent him to Peru.

 

He arrived in Lima in the early 1980s without speaking Spanish, competing against Ericsson for major telecommunications contracts. International calls home were expensive and unreliable. Sometimes it took an hour just to reach his wife, and they were allowed only ten minutes on the line.

 

Yet Peru changed his life. He thrived in the chaos and excitement of building telecommunications infrastructure in an emerging market. Philips, the smaller player, had to outwork Ericsson, which dominated Latin America and had grown complacent.

 

"We knew Ericsson well. They expected orders. We had to fight for them."

 

After four years in Peru, Goran achieved his next ambition. He wanted to become a country manager.

Philips, however, felt he lacked consumer experience and sent him to Italy instead, where he managed the company's cooling and freezing business across Northern Europe. The role broadened his commercial perspective, but deep down he knew he preferred industrial businesses.

 

Then came the call that changed everything.

 

Philips appointed him Chairman and CEO of Philips Thailand in 1988. At the time, the business generated around US$300 million in revenue and operated factories producing lighting products, televisions and semiconductors. Goran was only in his late thirties.

 

Thailand became one of the defining chapters of his career. He expanded the professional and industrial side of the business, opened new factories and won major projects. Philips invested heavily in preparing him, providing cultural training and coaching on how to lead in Asia.

 

"I loved working with Thai people. There is grace, humour and an incredible willingness to work hard."

The experience also taught him how quickly Asia was changing. Bangkok was becoming a magnet for investment, and Goran found himself at the centre of that growth.

 

After four successful years in Thailand, Philips moved him to Hong Kong to run Philips Lighting across Asia-Pacific. For the first time, he was no longer a country manager but responsible for an entire business unit. Overnight, he found himself managing many of the same country managers who had once been his peers.

 

It was not an easy transition.

 

At one point, Philips was negotiating to acquire what would become the largest lighting factory in China. General Electric was pursuing the same deal. Jack Welch himself flew to China to intervene.

Philips won.

 

Not long afterwards, Welch invited Goran to New York. They spent hours discussing why GE had lost.

Goran's answer was simple: Philips understood partnerships. The company had spent decades building relationships and respecting local stakeholders. GE's approach was different.

"Sometimes, you need to take a step back."

​

Jack Welch disagreed. Goran admired GE, but he also realised that its culture was probably too aggressive for him.

 

As Philips underwent a major restructuring in the 1990s, Goran returned to Europe to help redesign the organisation before moving to Singapore to establish Philips' regional headquarters for Asia.

By then, he had moved seven times in less than twenty years. His daughter was tired of relocating, and his family had finally found stability in Singapore. For the first time, Goran began to ask himself whether he wanted to spend the rest of his life at Philips.

 

The answer arrived unexpectedly.

 

An old acquaintance invited him to join Italcementi, the Italian cement giant, to build its Asian operations. It was a completely different industry, but Goran saw an opportunity to create something from scratch.

 

He accepted the challenge and spent the next twelve years leading the company's expansion across Asia, eventually joining the group management committee. Unlike Philips, Italcementi was still controlled by a family that had run the business for generations.

​

"You felt that you were part of the family."

 

He remained in Singapore, giving his family the stability they had long wanted, while helping to grow a business with more than twenty thousand employees and billions of euros in revenue.

 

After stepping down, Goran moved naturally into board and advisory roles. Today, he spends his time mentoring younger leaders, advising companies and connecting Western businesses with Asia.

 

Looking back at nearly five decades of work, he is grateful not just for the titles or the successes, but for the people he met along the way.

​

"Keep learning," he said. "The day you stop learning is the day you start deteriorating."