My Path - My Perspective

By Stephan Schmidheiny (updated Webpage version, 2009)

The many questions I am asked about my motivations and actions suggest that my ways of being and doing are not ordinary. Yet like most people, I am a product of my life experiences, which in turn have been both a cause and an effect of my Weltanschauung, my view of the world. I would like to summarize these here for the benefit of my friends and associates.

I believe that much of what I am was already part and parcel of my personality in the early years of my life, during my childhood and adolescence.

Entrepreneurship is a time-honored tradition among the Schmidheiny clan, and my father Max and other family members often discussed business affairs in my presence. My great-grandfather laid the foundations of the family business when he opened his first brick factory in Heerbrugg, in eastern Switzerland. My grandfather, in turn, invested in the emerging cement industry and later in asbestos-cement. In the next generation, these and other investments, such as those in WILD-LEITZ and BBC Brown Boveri, reflected the entrepreneurial spirit of my father Max and his brother Ernst.

My forebears also instilled in me the deep conviction that wealth demands certain responsibility. This conviction has led me to seek and implement new ways of doing philanthropic work.

My mother, Adda, counterbalanced this business outlook with her love of music and her virtuosity at the keyboard. I grew up in a family of art lovers. My parents had a collection of great French and Flemish masters, as well as a significant Hodler collection. They were also personally acquainted with many contemporary Swiss artists. At my mother's insistence, I learned to play classical pieces on the piano, an activity that to this day affords me great solace and pleasure.

I grew up surrounded by vineyards, and my family often went hiking in the mountains. Since my father was a keen sailor, we often spent our vacations in the Mediterranean islands, where I learned to dive. Those experiences awoke in me a growing concern for the environment.

I recall that as a very young child -- five or six years old -- my dream when I grew up was not to be a cowboy or to drive a steam engine; I wanted to be a missionary. I do not know whether that early ambition was a forerunner of my interest in spiritual concerns or of the desire to travel to faraway places that I have had all my life. Or was it simply a reaction to the fact that, despite my tender age, I already knew that Schmidheiny males were expected to become engineers?

However, over my father's objections, I studied law rather than engineering. My goal was not to become a lawyer, but to inquire into and understand the workings of society. When I graduated from law school, my father -- who was already old enough to retire -- expected me to follow in his steps. But I had other ideas. Ever since I had my first experience as a foreman in one of the factories in Brazil, I had begun to develop an interest in the economic and social development of nations and societies; indeed, I felt a much greater affinity for this area than for the world of business and industry.

Therefore, I applied for a job in the development field in Uganda. However, the disturbances that began to afflict Uganda at the time prevented me from traveling to Africa to take up my post. My father took advantage of this to persuade me to accept temporary employment in his business as secretary to one of his top executives, accompanying him in his trips around the world to monitor group operations. The idea of being paid to travel while deciding what to do with my life proved irresistible.

I was expected to take notes at meetings between my boss and local managers. Although I respected many of them because of their business experience, I often disagreed with their way of thinking. Soon I began making additional notes about their personality and behavior, describing how they interacted among themselves and with their subordinates. When I showed some of these informal notes to my boss, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he seemed to be far more interested in these personal observations than in the official minutes of the meetings. This taught me that important people do not always say important things, and that oftentimes better results can be obtained by going beyond established rules.

Since I was still interested in development, I accepted a position in Sales, Planning and Information Systems with one of the group companies in South Africa. At that time, South Africa was still under the white-imposed apartheid system. In a letter I wrote my father at the time, I told him that a system as unfair and inhumane as apartheid could not survive for long and was doomed to collapse within the next five years. My analysis proved correct in general terms, although my time estimate was off by a few years.

My Path - My Perspective.
Available in English (1.91 Mb, Complete Text)