Kuntoro Mangkusubroto started his American academic journey at Northeastern University, but his heart was set on Georgia Tech. Why, his professor wanted to know. “Because I have traveled to Georgia Tech and I want to go to Georgia Tech,” he told him.
That didn’t seem like a very good answer, so the professor urged him to raise his sights and think about Stanford. “I never heard of Stanford,” Kuntoro remembers answering, although he concedes he knew vaguely where it was: “Closer to Indonesia!”
He gave in: “Sure, I want to go to Stanford.” So a call was put in to William Grant Ireson, then chairman of industrial engineering, and by the time the receiver was back in its cradle Kuntoro was accepted.
“I didn’t really know who Ireson was, except the author of one of the best engineering economy textbooks.” (He was co-author of the classic Principles of Engineering Economy.) In the event, Kuntoro couldn’t believe his ears. “I didn’t fill in a form, I didn’t do anything!” That Ireson had accepted his friend’s recommendation on faith bowled him over.
“So I flew to Stanford. What did I learn there? Trust and integrity, that’s No. 1,” Kuntoro says. “Stanford was beautiful—I had the freedom to set my own menu. I had my host department, engineering, of course, but I could also choose courses in the business school.” Kuntoro treasures learning “not only the technicalities, but I learned about vision—how you use this knowledge for humankind. So when it comes to forming my value system, I got it at Stanford. I learned the attitude, and how to get things done.”
After Stanford, he headed back to his undergraduate alma mater, the Bandung Institute of Technology, where he established a graduate school of transportation in 1982 (and in 2003 founded its school of business and management). He moved on to policy analysis in the president’s office during the Suharto regime, then ran huge enterprises like Indonesia’s state coal company, and later, PT Tambang Timah, the state tin-mining company. There he led Indonesia’s first privatization of a state-owned company. He also did a stint as energy minister.
Ask him how he manages to move from one top position to another through a succession of presidents, and he’ll tell you: “I don’t play politics.”
It’s an answer. But ask someone from an international aid agency, and field officials will say Kuntoro is dynamic and resolutely honest, and his reputation goes far back.
So did Stanford leave him more of an administrator or an engineer? “I learned ) a mixture of engineering, operational research, economics, psychology, business and systems—a strange combination—plus decision analysis,” he says. “Basically, I’m a decision analyst; I’m prepared to enter any sector.
“I didn’t have any background in mining coal!” he points out. It all goes back to what Stanford gave him: “an aptitude to weigh and solve problems; the basic structure for solving real-world problems.”
They don’t come bigger than Aceh.
