Alumni Profiles Series: Stein Lundby

Stein Lundby earned his M.S. in electrical engineering from Duke University and an M.S. in communications engineering from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. He currently leads special projects at Qualcomm, where he has spent nearly three decades driving innovation across research, product development, and corporate strategy. Today, his work focuses on extending the impact of smartphone technologies into new industries, including modernizing warehouse logistics and retail systems and supporting public services such as fire departments.

How would you describe yourself, after nearly three decades at Qualcomm?

Honestly, when I joined Qualcomm, I thought I’d stay only a year or two to experience California and the tech industry. Then interesting opportunities kept appearing as the company kept growing, and I stayed because of my own curiosity. Rather than becoming a deep expert in one area, I took advantage of that growth to explore many different roles across the organization. I’ve always been drawn to variety and change. Over time that took me from engineering into strategy and organizational work, which wasn’t planned; it was discovered. And I think that’s an important distinction. Large companies don’t hand you a new path. You have to keep your eyes open and recognize it when it appears.

Image

What is your playbook for building something that lasts within a large organization?

The thing I see most often, especially with engineers who are trained to solve problems fast, is people jumping to solutions before they’ve really understood the problem. So step one for me is always slow down. Identify the gap between where things are and where they could or should be, and then create real alignment around that gap. Once you have that, you build a structured proposal and secure a charter to move forward. Then you implement. It sounds simple, but the piece people skip is the alignment. And when you skip it, you’re constantly fighting friction downstream. Large organizations run on shared context. If you haven’t done the work of creating that context first, nothing you build will stick.

How do you approach uncertainty, especially with rapid changes like AI?

The first instinct most people have is to resolve uncertainty as quickly as possible. Humans and groups naturally dislike uncertainty, but rushing to resolve it causes more problems than it solves. So I’ve learned to hold back. Sit with the uncertainty long enough to actually characterize it. Break it into dimensions. What do we know? What don’t we know? What are the variables? Then build a framework around those dimensions. Frameworks are essential for aligning people and enabling efficient collaboration. Once you have one, you can lay out the problem objectively within it, which stops uncertainty from becoming a battle between people and their egos. You go from one overwhelming block of unknowns to a set of dimensions you can actually work through.

What major industry shift do people underestimate right now?

AI gets all the attention, and it deserves a lot of it. But I think the reuse of smartphone technology across industries is seriously underestimated, and it’s going to be impactful for years in ways people aren’t expecting. Here’s a concrete example: smartphones commercialized MEMS sensors, gyroscopes and accelerometers, at a scale that made them tiny and cheap. That directly enabled modern consumer drones and the entire low-altitude economy. Nobody drew a straight line between those two things at the time. There are dozens more connections like that still waiting to be found. The technology is sitting there. It just needs someone to ask, 
“Where else does this apply?”

Image

What skills will matter most in the next decade, and what mindset should early-career people carry into it?

Lower-level tasks like software programming, design, and financial transactions are going to be significantly reduced by AI. That’s real, and people should take it seriously. But what AI can’t easily do is understand how systems integrate, how components connect to create real-world value, and how human behavior shapes whether something succeeds or fails. The people who can think formally about systems—who can see the whole picture, not just the part they’re responsible for—are going to have a significant advantage. Even companies like OpenAI, in my view, are missing the big picture of value creation. They’re focused on the chat interface and API sales. But the harder question is always, “What actually changes in the world because of this?” That kind of thinking is rare, and it’s not something you can automate. 

For personal development: ask questions. Challenge the assumptions that everyone treats as fixed. Small children do this naturally, and somewhere along the way we train it out of people. Why does this process work the way it does? Does it have to? What would happen if it didn’t? That kind of thinking prepares you for disruption, because disruption is almost always someone questioning something that wasn’t supposed to be questioned.

Image

How do you keep finding motivation and stay engaged across such a long career?

Like everything in life, there are ups and downs. But when things become less interesting or flat, even when they’re going well and you have everything under control, that’s the signal to revisit your situation. I’ve always looked for challenge. Even in the best jobs, once I’ve mastered something well, I start looking for harder areas or new problems. Looking for challenges tends to lead you to other people who want to address those same challenges, which creates a good environment. There are countless problems to solve in the world and within organizations. Find places with challenges where the organization actually wants to solve them, and jump in. And when you do, be patient with yourself. Expect six months before you really understand what’s happening in a new area. With that expectation you become more patient, and after six months you start understanding, contributing, and moving things forward together.

What is your most memorable moment at Duke?

I enjoyed Duke and the whole area so much. Coming from Switzerland with almost no knowledge of the U.S. and even less of the South, I discovered and fell in love with North Carolina: the bluegrass music, the Smoky Mountains, the big wrap-around porches, the green trees everywhere. I even loved the weather, which surprised me. Going from the hot, humid summers to frozen rain in winter, with bushes covered in ice looking like crystal branches—I’d never seen anything like that before. The campus itself holds all of that, the way it embraces the natural beauty, the trees and plants and flowers. That variety from really cold ice rains to hot, humid lushness was something I genuinely loved. 

AUTHOR

Image

Troy Tien Nguyen

Recent M.Q.M. graduate

Troy Tien Nguyen recently graduated from the MQM: Business Analytics program at Duke Fuqua School of Business, concentrating in risk. He is currently exploring careers in quantitative finance, data science, and product management. Outside of class, Troy enjoys lifting, journaling, and trying new experiences—most recently through tennis and golf classes at Duke.