Interview with Håkan Persson, incoming CEO of Smoltek

Q: Can you provide a short descrip­tion of your pro­fes­sion­al back­ground and chal­lenges you have been drawn to in the past?

A: I have worked in the IT industry my whole career. Both large and small com­pan­ies. Star­ted once at IBM as train­ee. I have broad gen­er­al man­age­ment exper­i­ence and cap­ab­il­it­ies from vari­ous pos­i­tions as CEO, Sales & Mar­ket­ing Dir­ect­or and Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Exec­ut­ive from large, mid-size and small organ­iz­a­tions. I have been CEO for Aspiro, Day­dream, Scalado, Pre­cise Bio­met­rics and Neonode Inc, com­pan­ies work­ing with new and nov­el tech­no­lo­gies try­ing to find their place in the mar­ket. In addi­tion, I have been Pres­id­ent Emea at Telel­o­gic and Coun­try man­ager for IBM Soft­ware Group in Sweden.

Most of my assign­ments have been centered around change and growth, estab­lish­ing new busi­nesses, or turn­ing around busi­nesses that not yet have found their way to the market.

Q: What was it about Smol­tek and its tech­no­logy plat­form that made you inter­ested in becom­ing the company’s new CEO?

A: I like work­ing with excit­ing tech­no­lo­gies. My edu­ca­tion­al back­ground is marketing/​sales and fin­ance, but I have always had a good abil­ity to under­stand the value of dif­fer­ent tech­no­lo­gies, and this is what trig­gers me, how to make com­mer­cial use of the tech­no­logy and to cre­ate cus­tom­er and company/​shareholder value.

With respect to Smol­tek I believe they have a dis­rupt­ive tech­no­logy and plat­form that can play an instru­ment­al part going for­ward in sev­er­al indus­tries to cre­ate more capa­city in a smal­ler foot­print with less resource con­sump­tion cost effect­ively. Prob­ably the chal­lenge here is not to find applic­a­tion areas, there are many, but to decide on which to focus on.

Q: What are the main per­son­al strengths and exper­i­ences you will bring to the Smol­tek team?

A: I have worked a lot with commercializing/​industrializing tech­no­logy com­pan­ies in the past, find­ing the rel­ev­ant use cases to pur­sue and how to struc­tur­ally “pack­age” them to make an impact and to find the right customers/​partners to address.

Q: Can you give some examples of what you have learned from your pre­vi­ous roles as CEO for lis­ted tech­no­logy companies?

A: To my exper­i­ence the key ques­tions nor­mally boils down to

What – what is our value pro­pos­i­tion, what prob­lem do we solve?

Who – who are the customers/​partners we should address?

How – how do we address them most efficiently?

and the over­arch­ing question

Why – why are we rel­ev­ant, what is it that makes us stand out, our unique selling points?

If you can answer these ques­tions cor­rectly and build the accom­pa­ny­ing mater­i­al, plan and actions around these, you have cre­ated a good plat­form to become successful.

Q: How will you pre­pare for your new role before join­ing the com­pany in October?

I will try to read up on the com­pany and technology/​offering and meet as many people as pos­sible before I start so I can come in “fly­ing” with a view of my own when I start.

A: Based on your exper­i­ence, what are the most import­ant chal­lenges to over­come for small tech­no­logy com­pan­ies when tak­ing dis­rupt­ive new tech­no­logy from concept to commercialization?

In my exper­i­ence many com­pan­ies that I have worked with didn’t have clear answers to the ques­tions lis­ted above but were too broad in their approach without a clear focus. A small com­pany is very small in this con­text, so you need to focus, do the ana­lys­is, decide where you want to pri­or­it­ize, decide where to tar­get, get an angle and pur­sue it the whole way through.

Q: What is your view on the dis­rupt­ive poten­tial of nan­o­tech­no­logy in areas such as semi­con­duct­or applic­a­tions, energy storage/​conversion and biotechnology?

A: I need to more about the com­pany, the team and the tech­no­logy to provide a good answer to this ques­tion but, gen­er­ally speak­ing nan­o­tech­no­logy is a “hot” top­ic and have been so for some time. Nan­o­tech­no­logy provides the cap­ab­il­it­ies that every­body is look­ing for, more capa­city in ever smal­ler formats con­sum­ing less power. Prob­ably the applic­a­tion areas over time will be end­less, hence the need to focus to get an inroad and plat­form to build from.

Q: What do you enjoy doing when not working?

A: I like to exer­cise, be with my fam­ily and to travel. I have my daugh­ter and grand­son in Gothen­burg, so I look for­ward to meet­ing them more frequently.

Q: Any­thing you would like to add that could be of interest to Smoltek’s shareholders?

A: I am very much look­ing for­ward to tak­ing on this assign­ment. This is the kind of com­pany I really enjoy work­ing with. I see the poten­tial in the com­pany and the tech­no­logy and is look­ing for­ward to the jour­ney mak­ing the com­pany a suc­cess and to cre­ate sub­stan­tial value for all stakeholders.

As I am liv­ing in Höllviken, out­side Malmö, I will find an apart­ment in Gothenburg.

The Smol­tek team wel­comes Håkan, and is looks for­ward to work­ing with him.