Avnet discusses innovation priorities and the future of Industrial IoT

In an interview, Sunny Trinh, Vice President of Demand Creation and Cool Stuff at Avnet, discussed the IIoT trend and how the mHUB Accelerator aligns with Avnet’s corporate mission.

1. What types of technologies is Avnet interested in?

We focus primarily on disruptive innovations that help improve the world. It's that simple, and in turn makes it very broad. With these technologies, we can do things smarter, faster, cheaper, and if it can save the world, even better.

2. Why does Avnet work with early-stage startups?

Avnet will be a hundred years old next year, and we have over 2 million customers. You see a lot of innovation. So we think we can help every startup fill that gap, and by doing that, we can greatly increase their chances of success. So it's going to be a win-win because that's one of the challenges that startups face. I've worked for a lot of startups, and I've had my own startup. So I know that startups have very limited resources, limited time, and they can't do everything.

Having a partner as big as Avnet allows customers to really focus on their core capabilities and then let the partner really fill in all the other gaps. That's why we want to help these startups because it goes back to the types of technologies that we're interested in because we're helping these technologies come to fruition, and really, customers never know when they're going to run into any situation. For the next generation of disruptive innovation, we want to give all companies every opportunity to succeed.

3. What are the biggest trends you see in IIoT over the next 5-10 years?

Every industry right now, and I mean every industry, whether it’s tech or non-tech, they’re trying to do smarter things. So you hear about things like AI. Everybody is collecting a lot of data, figuring out which data is relevant, and then they can do something with it. So it’s a huge trend. A lot of it is industrial IoT, but it can be applied to anything. We’re dealing with everything from dairy farms, cattle farms, to agriculture, to Bestbuy. Especially now, with the COVID-19 vaccine being released, we’re also doing solutions like the full process of medical logistics.

The part that allows you to compute all of this data in the fastest, most secure, and cheapest way possible will be the biggest trend, and the companies that do that will likely lead the next generation of innovation. Some examples like I mentioned are AI, edge computing, and blockchain.

AI allows you to take that data and make it really smart. Edge computing allows you to do things faster and cheaper because you don't have to send everything to the cloud. But for me, I think the biggest trend is going to be blockchain because it really provides the most secure and organized way to manage data. Security is becoming more and more important because you keep hearing about a lot of companies and data being hacked.

And what blockchain does is allow that data to be interoperable between companies, between organizations, and across geographic boundaries like countries. Because with a really good blockchain solution, you can choose to send any data back and forth and still retain your privacy, where if you were using a database, you could send everything. And in terms of security, it's the most secure platform to use because you can't just capture one central server or hack one central server to access everything.

4. As an organizer, what is Avnet’s innovation focus?

Probably similar to almost every other organization or at least more mature organizations, every organization is looking for growth. So one of the ways to grow is by finding and helping these disruptive companies and then becoming a part of them, becoming a partner with them, helping them grow. And then growing with them.

It's a challenge because the strategy for a lot of companies is to go find startups. Well, you can't just find startups. You have to find the right startups because 99 out of 100 startups fail. Or even more than that. Even the ones that are successful, sometimes it takes years to get there. That's why we want to fill those gaps with mHUB. We increase the chances of success and speed up the success and shorten the time it takes for them to be successful because if they don't have to do something they're not good at, it reduces risk and helps them do everything faster.

5. How do the mHUB incubator, and incubator accelerators in general, align with Avnet’s innovation strategy?

mHUB has helped us connect with some really great startups. That’s important because, like I mentioned, you can’t spend all your resources on every startup or even every company because there are so many failures. You have to be selective.

mHUB provides a lot of free services to Avnet to enable these startups to be successful, and those can fill in gaps. Whether it's providing some financial support in the beginning, even providing mentorship, providing office space and some equipment, etc. At the same time, there are other gaps that can be filled by Avnet, and it's a really powerful solution and a really powerful partnership for these startups because again, it mitigates the risk and allows the startups to really focus on their core competencies.