Sonita Lontoh, VP of Global Marketing for HP in 3D Printing and Digital Manufacturing, discusses the nature of building awareness in emerging technologies like additive manufacturing.
Danny:
All right, so let's get started. In today's episode, I have Sonita Lontoh here, who is from HP. She's actually the VP of Global Marketing for HP under their 3D Printing and Digital Manufacturing Division. Sonita, thank you so much for joining us today.

Sonita:
Thank you very much for having me.

Danny:
So, long title, there's a lot going on there. So, maybe tell me a little bit about what your role is there at HP with the 3D printing and digital manufacturing.

Sonita:
All right, so I joined HP about a year ago doing global marketing for this new business, and actually, I've always been interested in the intersection of new technology, the business model, and policies, and my experience has been really diverse, from the entrepreneurial, to venture-backed Silicon Valley companies, to Fortune Global 100 companies, and my role and responsibilities here really is to position HP as that trusted solutions leader that helps our industrial customers, industrial manufacturing customers, succeed in their digital manufacturing journey, and when you think about it, that's actually quite a departure from the core historical of who HP is, 'cause I think most people know HP mainly as a consumer and commercial human technology company, but this new foray, this new business into 3D printing and digital manufacturing is slightly different than the traditional HP, right? As probably your audience knows in the world of industrial manufacturing, it is not enough, I would say, for a technology company to only be viewed as a hardware technology vendor, but it more important for the company to be viewed as that trusted solutions leader that actually has the expertise in the end-to-end solutions, namely hardware technology, software, and services, to help the industrial customer succeed in their journey.
Because, at the end of the day, when you think about it, customers want to apply new technologies such as 3D printing or digital manufacturing to really achieve benefits. And, there are many benefits of 3D printing, but, in general, I would summarize them into three things. The first is to help our industrial customers achieve operational efficiencies for their own manufacturing operations internally. Second, to help our industrial customers to be able to provide superior customer experience for their end consumers, externally. And, last, which is usually the hardest, especially for big, incumbent manufacturers, is to create new business models and new revenue streams that wouldn't otherwise be possible. And so, a lot of my marketing activities here at HP really focus on developing the strategies and executing on a multi-problem, multi-channel marketing plan, then position HP as that trusted solutions leader.

Danny:
Excellent, yeah, and this whole digital transformation piece that's happening is just rapidly evolving. The manufacturers, industrial companies as we know it, and I think the whole 3D printing aspect in particular is very fascinating. We're seeing a lot of manufacturers that are very excited about it, for many, many reasons. So, on that note, maybe we can jump into a little bit of, maybe some interesting innovations, or the different applications that you're seeing that you're rolling out with your solutions.

Sonita:
Great, and I'm glad you're asking about applications, because, I think in this world of 3D printing and digital manufacturing, hey, great to have technology,