After nearly four decades at Honeywell, Vimal Kapur reached the top — and then took on the task of breaking the 140-year-old industrial conglomerate into three companies.
Kapur tells Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson how he managed that separation while simultaneously building Honeywell Technologies into a focused automation company, reshaping its portfolio and deciding where the new business should compete. The challenge, he says, is capturing the advantages of focus without giving up the benefits of scale.
A big part of that judgment comes from staying close to customers. Kapur explains why he tries to spend roughly a third of his time with them, how those conversations help test major strategic decisions, and why he believes “the CEO should have a founder’s mindset” when it comes to products, innovation and the future of the business.