Coronavirus Response: 40,000-sq.-ft. Hospital in 10 Days

Each month, Tony Uphoff, visionary CEO of Thomasnet.com, joins
Cloud Wars Live for a recurring segment. “Uphoff on Industry”
will explore the innovations, upheavals, and breakthroughs
reshaping the the world of manufacturing and industrial markets.
Join Tony and me as we discuss disruptive new trends in the
digital-industrial world. These include how we design, source and
manufacture products. And also the new ways in which industrial
companies are getting up to speed on marketing, sales and
customer experience.


Episode 10


In this episode: Tony says we have the benefit of having had a
ringside seat at a lot of these market transitions. He says it
always surprises you how long it takes for them to happen – and
then the speed with which they ultimately happen. Tony says he
thinks we’re at one of those stages right now, with industry 4.0
and digital transformation.


Tony says if you look at the valuations of a tech company, it’s
much, much higher than a manufacturing company. Tesla is an
outlier – sure, he says, they’re bending steel just like the
others, but they’ve clearly fused tech at the center.


He says a sunflower moves based on the angle of the sun – and
that’s what SunBot, a company that captures 90% of the sun’s rays
does. It emulates nature, and it’s creating a whole new solar
technology.


Tony goes on to say it was his chief technology officer who
raised the idea that Thomas should develop a business unit called
“Thomas Industrial Data,” to sell datasets into the buyside
financial institutions. Tony says when he brought that up, he
said, “please call me in a month.” But he was right, because the
CTO was able to see that much quicker than anybody else in the
company.


He says he lives in a glass house too, and he’s trying to
understand what customer success really means. He says if you’re
in the wrong hands, and you’re wildly overpromising on something,
and you don’t know exactly what it is. But he says if you go to
the other end of the spectrum it’s a license to upsell you after
you’ve bought the core product or service.


Tony goes on to say that China assembled a 40,000 square-foot
hospital in 10 days to assist people for the Coronavirus. They
used prefabricated materials, and he is an awe of that.


Tony’s podcast is on all the major platforms as well as
https://ThomasNet.com. You can also subscribe to Thomas’ daily
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