This interview is part of the Leading Asia series, which features in-depth conversations with some of the region’s most value-creating leaders on what it takes to realize bold ambitions and take them further.
Sidney Lu has been part of the Foxconn story for more than four decades. He was there at the beginning, when the company had revenues of around $60 million and ambitions that must have sounded implausible to almost everyone. That company is now $260 billion in revenues.
Today, as Chairman and CEO of Foxconn Interconnect Technology (FIT), the precision components subsidiary that was spun-out of Foxconn, Lu leads a company of 70,000 employees worldwide. Over the last four years, the company’s value has increased eight-fold.
FIT supplies what Lu calls the nervous system of modern electronics: the connectors, high-speed cables, power systems, and signal transmission components that move data and power through smartphones, AI servers, data centers, electric vehicles, and networking equipment. Its customer list — spanning Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, and other global technology leaders — reflects four decades of relationship-building that Lu describes less as business development than as partnership through adversity. Most of FIT’s major customer relationships are measured in decades, not deal cycles.
Lu’s profile is unusual among leaders of his generation in Taiwan. He earned dual degrees in mechanical science & engineering and mathematics at the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign — studying in the United States for his undergraduate education at a time when most of his peers from Taiwan went abroad only for graduate school. He then spent nearly a decade in the American Midwest, first at Packard Electric (General Motors) and then at AMP, building deep expertise in connector technology before Terry Gou, Foxconn’s founder, recruited him back to Asia in 1990. Those years studying and working in the U.S. gave Lu something he returns to repeatedly when explaining how he leads: technical discipline alongside the self-confidence and risk tolerance of a Western workplace.
Three principles run through everything he does and says. He has never blamed his team for failures. He has never stopped showing up in person when things go wrong — including on midnight factory shifts. And he has never allowed success to substitute for reinvention: every three years, he holds himself and his organization to a new “wow factor,” a standard of innovation that exceeds what anyone expected. Miss that cycle, he says, and you become a legend — by which he means history.
In this Leading Asia interview, Sidney Lu talks with Albert Chang and Pooya Nikooyeh, senior partners at McKinsey, about building a world-class technology company from Taiwan, sustaining entrepreneurial drive across four decades, and what it takes to keep reinventing yourself at the top. What follows is an edited version of the conversation.
McKinsey: What are the defining moments that shaped who you are as a leader?
Sidney Lu: The first one I would point to is my high school entrance exam. I was fourteen years old. Most of my classmates came from elite junior high schools and placed on the first list. I ended up on the second — placed in a second-tier school instead of my first choice. At that age, it was very devastating. It was especially hard given that my twin brother got into his first-choice school. I wondered how I was going to deal with it.
I was wallowing in self-pity. And my mother came to me and said: what are you going to do about it? Move on. It’s done. Unless you want to retake the exam and hold yourself back a year, get over it. And then she said two things that have stayed with me ever since. First: maybe you’re smarter than your brother, but guess what — he was still hitting the books while you were sleeping. It’s not that he’s smarter. He worked a lot harder than you did. So don’t wallow in self-pity. Don’t think about this as a failure. The sun will come out. The sun will set. Move on with life. Take the lesson — you didn’t work as hard, so get over it.
Take ownership. Take accountability. And more importantly, don’t wallow in past failures. It happens. How much regret or anger you carry doesn’t help anything. What’s important is what’s ahead.
McKinsey: Were there defining moments during the Foxconn years that shaped your leadership in the same way?
Sidney Lu: A lot of them. First, we learned so much from our founder Terry Gou. He’s a go-getter and he started from scratch. He built this empire starting with $7,500 from his mother’s retirement fund. Now we’re over $260 billion in revenues. That takes drive, dedication, and resilience.
‘That sense of mission — of building something that had never existed, of putting Taiwan on that map — was more compelling than security or status.’
Two crises come to mind. One was in 1994. We were manufacturing CPU sockets for one of our semiconductor customers. We busted our tails to get the products out. We made it and submitted to them. The thing about this socket is it had a handle you open it and close it. When they closed it, the connectors exploded from the back end. Everything just fell apart. That was a huge disaster. The customer’s procurement team called me asking how this could have happened.
We had done all the analysis and design carefully except the clamping force needed to hold the sockets together. We had essentially guessed at that one and guessed it wrong. The whole team was in a panic. I said: calm down. This is a very straightforward engineering problem. You increase the clamping force.
In two days — forty-eight hours straight, no sleep we prototyped a redesign. We got on a plane to meet with our customer. First, we apologized. We messed up. Then we showed them what we had changed and demonstrated it right in front of them. It worked. What that taught me: own up to your mistake immediately. And then: we fixed it. That’s the recovery story.
The other moment was in 2005 — the only product in my 45 years that did not work as planned. It was called “two-in-one” — a swing-design memory socket for one of our consumer electronics customers, an elegant piece of engineering. We made it work mechanically. It functioned. But it failed when they put it on their system. They had to scrap their production plan and seal the port entirely.
We later discovered the root cause was a microsecond electrical bounce issue that could have been resolved with two capacitors on their board. But the software and hardware teams at the customer let it slide rather than fix it. The product was killed for reasons that had nothing to do with the engineering. We just had to accept it and move on. No recovery story — just: it failed, learn the lesson, and keep going.
McKinsey: What drew you to join Foxconn when you were already working at a much larger American firm?
Sidney Lu: People ask me: why would you leave a company close to $5 billion in revenue (GM) to join a $60 million startup? The answer is what Terry Gou said to me. He pointed out that among the top ten connector companies in the world at the time, seven were from the United States and three were from Japan. Where’s Taiwan? Foxconn at the time wasn’t even in the top 50. And he asked me a simple question: do you want to build something meaningful here?
That hit me. That sense of mission — of building something that had never existed, of putting Taiwan on that global map — was more compelling than security or status. Our core values from the beginning were very simple: love, faith, and determination. I later adapted that at FIT: I swapped “faith” for “confidence.” In Chinese they are almost interchangeable, but in English they are not. Confidence, determination, and love. I switched them around — but the spirit is the same.
McKinsey: Your mother played an enormous role in your formation — not just in that early lesson, but throughout your years studying in the United States. What did that support mean to you?
Sidney Lu: I am genuinely indebted to my mother. When my brother and I were studying at Illinois, she came to join us. Our first year we stayed in the dorms, and the second year we moved into an apartment. She came over, cooked for us, and in her spare time she enrolled at the community college to learn English. She uprooted her entire life to be there for us. That is a sacrifice you can never fully repay.
What she gave me went beyond practical support. The lesson she taught me at fourteen — don’t wallow, take accountability, move on — that was the foundation. But watching her actually live those values, watching her learn a new language in a new country just to be present for her sons, that shaped something in me that no classroom could. The discipline, the love, the refusal to feel sorry for yourself — it all came from her.
McKinsey: You are the first in the office most mornings, often before 5:30. You have worked 36-hour shifts on the shop floor during crises. You ran a half marathon this year. Where does that drive come from?
Sidney Lu: First of all, over the years I discovered I genuinely enjoy my work. I really love what I do. And as the years go by, I get a real kick out of seeing the people underneath me grow professionally. Those are the things that positively reinforce my commitment to what I’m doing every day. Especially nowadays I’m spending more time training my staff, and that to me is deeply rewarding.
But the other part is that I always look at where we are and ask: is this it? The answer is always no. We can always be better. That drive comes from within — no one has to push me. When you love the path you have chosen, the energy is organic.
McKinsey: You once showed up for the midnight shift during a factory crisis in Japan. Why midnight?
Sidney Lu: I arrived at the factory at four in the afternoon and told the team: I’m going to wash up, sleep, and then I’m coming back for the midnight shift. They looked at me like I was crazy. But there are two reasons midnight is the right time to be on the floor during a crisis.
First, it is an emergency — there is no time to waste. Second, and more importantly: midnight is the best time to go on the floor and observe what is actually happening in real time. No customers, no managers, no VIPs watching over everyone’s shoulder. This is the natural state of the operation. That is when you can genuinely understand what the problem is.
And the broader point: you cannot ask people to work hard if you are not willing to do the same. You cannot be fake. If you tell your team to roll up their sleeves but you arrive at nine in the morning, that message is dead on arrival. Leadership by example is not optional.
‘Leadership by example is not optional’
McKinsey: What is your philosophy on developing talent?
Sidney Lu: You have to give people real chances. Let them have their moment to shine. Challenge them — and at the same time, make sure they know there is someone behind them to back them up. Those two things together are what allow talent to actually develop. They need the stretch, and they need to know they are not alone.
As long as someone has the drive to learn, the drive to improve, and is not afraid of hard work, give them the chance. That builds loyalty — they know you believe in them and that you are investing in their growth.
And when things go wrong — because they will — the worst thing a leader can do is start looking at the people working for you. Blame flows downward easily. But when you do that, you lose respect immediately. You have to own it. That is not just principle; it is the only way to maintain the trust of a team.
McKinsey: You describe yourself as shaped by both Eastern and Western influences. How do you think about that combination?
Sidney Lu: In Taiwan, we were educated across multiple traditions — Confucianism, Daoism, and an emphasis on law and order. China has always been a melting pot: Buddhism came from India, Christianity from the West, Islam from Central Asia. All these philosophies and religions coexisted. So from the beginning, we were shaped by a kind of synthesis.
The Eastern side gives you discipline, respect for others, and a genuine commitment to hard work. Those are deep and consistent values. What the Western education gave me specifically is self- confidence. And self-love. You have to love yourself. If you don’t love yourself, nobody else will love you except maybe your mother. Don’t beat yourself up. Give yourself grace. Recognize where you are. And have the confidence to move forward.
That combination — Western confidence and risk tolerance alongside Eastern discipline and respect is how I think about my own leadership. Neither alone is enough. Together, they let you be bold without being reckless, and rigorous without being rigid.
McKinsey: What is your philosophy on unleashing innovation?
Sidney Lu: I always ask my people: what is your next wow factor? When you are working on something, I want to know what you are doing that is different, that exceeds what anyone would expect. That is where the wow lives — in the gap between what people expect and what you actually deliver.
As I was growing up professionally at Foxconn, I always aimed for a wow every three years. If you miss that cycle, you become a legend — by which I mean you become history. The world moved on and you didn’t. That is how you stay current and stay young. So every three years or so, you need something genuinely new. Which means well before the three years are up, you are already preparing the next one. You launch an innovation and go back to the drawing board at the same time.
‘I always aimed for a wow every three years. If you miss that cycle... you become history’
McKinsey: FIT’s value has expanded eight-fold over the last four years. Most leaders in your position would feel they had earned the right to coast. How do you maintain that entrepreneurial hunger?
Sidney Lu: I tell people: I love my job. And what that means in practice is that I look at where we are and ask — is this it? Is this really it? And I always say no, it’s not it. We can be better. That continuing engagement, that cycle of always refreshing what you do and how you do it every three years — you have to have it. That is what gets you out of bed early and makes you run to work. Not because someone is pushing you. Because you genuinely cannot wait to find out what comes next.
Failures don’t destroy you. Failures don’t destabilize you. You roll with them and keep moving forward. That is the full cycle — from the fourteen- year-old who had to own a disappointing exam result, all the way to now. The lesson has never changed. Own it. Fix it if you can. And move on.
McKinsey: If your mother were here today and could see everything you and your brother have built — what do you think she would say?
Sidney Lu: Good job, Sidney. That is what she would say. In her last few years, when she was not feeling well, I would spend every Sunday morning with her. We would sit together in her room, have breakfast — sometimes fruit, a cup of tea. Sometimes I would nudge her to get up from her chair and do a few steps with me, just so she had some movement. Those mornings were the best time. Really. I cherished every one of them. She shaped who I am today.
If she were still with us today, she would say: Sidney, you’re doing good. She kept telling me that. Good job, Sidney. That was enough.
Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of McKinsey & Company or have its endorsement.