Dr Victoria Van Camp is head of R&D at SKF AB and a member of the group’s executive leadership team. She and her global R&D team are responsible for developing the technology – bearings, steel, AI, sensors, you name it – to make 113 y old SKF thrive into the next 113+ years. AB SKF is a 86 BSEK (2018) company headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden with 43 000 employees in 130 locations globally. The company, a start-up in 1907, was founded by Sven Wingqvist, a textile plant maintenance engineer. SKF’s vision is ‘a world of reliable rotation’, and is transforming itself from product-selling to a provider of reliable rotation.
Victoria has been with SKF since 1996, starting as a researcher in tribology* , then taking a tribological innovation -the NoWear™ bearing- into the market. Passionate about intrapreneurship, she moved on to building up SKF’s engineering consultancy business. From there on she took customer-facing roles in strategic marketing and product development. Since 2017 Victoria is the chief technology officer and head of R&D in SKF. One of her main objectives is to ensure the company engages in external collaboration in R&D, and that it is connected to filling gaps in the company technology roadmap. SKF spends 2.8% of turnover in R&D, and Victoria is convinced that shareholders expect focused and lean operations.
SKF’s R&D engineers use the hashtag #ILoveNotInventedHere, and we know speed comes by knowing your technology gaps and being open to others’ filling them better than you can. This how SKF came across Presenso, an Israeli startup acquired by AB SKF in October 2019. With development teams all over the world from Detroit over Schweinfurt and Haifa to Bangalore and Shanghai, Victoria lives in Gothenburg, Sweden and tries to minimize flying by having excellent local leadership (and high bandwidth videoconferencing).
