Hugo Nordell

Hugo Nordell has degrees in engineering, economics and finance, along with a background in technology entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, USA. He has also headed up software engineering and product management for an Internet of Things software company that operated across three continents. Hugo joined Sandvik in 2017 and is currently the Vice President of Sandvik’s Center of Digital Excellence.

Q: What is the purpose of the Center of Digital Excellence?
A: The purpose is to develop, educate and enable digital business inside business area Sandvik Machining Solutions, both in terms of driving internal efficiencies using modern technology, but also to help shape new customer-facing solutions.

Q: What attracted you to Sandvik?
A: Among other things, I have clear business goals, the freedom to decide how to achieve them and can rapidly take decisions close to customers. I also like the fact that we solve problems on a global scale and I contribute to the outcome.

Q: What are you doing to attract new digital talent?
A: We try to show that there are meaningful challenges with global impact ready to be solved in entirely new ways and that our results lead to tangible outcomes in the physical world. It’s very difficult for a startup to offer this kind of bridge between the digital and the physical.

Q: Would you recommend that other people with similar skillsets as yours work at Sandvik?
A: Yes, I would. I think people like myself, who have mostly worked in software, stand to learn a lot from how complex and challenging manufacturing really is in a way that software is not. A lot of people who work at well-funded startups would become better at managing resources if they were exposed to manufacturing.