Electrocomponents plans new US innovation hub in Texas

The partnership with Lake Walk in Bryan-College Station, Texas, is a key part of Electrocomponents' global innovation and customer engagement strategy and will include outfitting of 8,000 square feet of custom collaboration, lab and demonstration space staffed by a dedicated onsite team of experts from the company's Allied Electronics & Automation, DesignSpark, OKdo, and Synovos brands a press release reads. The new facility will offer access to tools, resources, expertise, products, and support for designers, engineers, inventors, and start-ups, as well as the company's existing customers and suppliers. In addition, it will provide prototyping facilities onsite for start-ups to use along with consulting services to aid in testing, development, and launching of new products and services. "We are very excited to partner with Lake Walk on this truly innovative facility – our first in North America. We've long had DesignSpark, our virtual design engineering community, and platform, and this partnership will now add a corresponding fully connected physical space to help innovators and engineers create and improve the next generation of technology," says Mike Bray, Vice President of Innovation and DesignSpark for Electrocomponents in the press release. The partnership between Electrocomponents and Lake Walk includes naming rights for the facility formerly known as the Lake Walk Innovation Center, which will now be named the DesignSpark Innovation Center. To optimise the new North America facility, Electrocomponents will the lessons learned from its work with similar innovation labs in Europe. "We acquired this building and started the Innovation Center with just this purpose in mind, to create a meaningful place of global impact at the intersection of technology and community," said Spencer Clements of Traditions Acquisition Partnership, the General Partner of the Center. "The DesignSpark Innovation Center is the perfect name and reflects not only a key brand within Electrocomponents but also the culture of creativity that emanates from all of Lake Walk." The company says it will be hiring additional staff for the DesignSpark Innovation Center in the coming months.