ABB chief digital officerOnce again, an industrial corporation striving for digitalization solutions looks to Silicon Valley. Industrial and automation companies continue to search outside the industry for talent. Often, they just don’t work out. The pace of change in industrial is so much slower and bureaucracies are so entrenched that they get frustrated and leave. This one from ABB is interesting. Will he be able to build a software division to rival GE? We’ll keep watching.

ABB has appointed Guido Jouret as Chief Digital Officer, reporting to ABB’s CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer, effective October 1, 2016. Labeled a “pioneer of the Internet of Things” by ABB, Jouret will lead the next level of development and deployment of ABB’s digital solutions for customers globally and across all businesses.

Jouret is a citizen of both the United States and Belgium, with long experience in Silicon Valley. He served for 20 years at Cisco after obtaining a PhD in Computer Science. His most recent role at Cisco was as General Manager of the Internet of Things division, which aims to connect billions of devices to the internet across a wide range of industries.

Prior to that, he was Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group, a unit responsible for incubating new businesses. Under his leadership, the team created nine new start-ups, including those, which became Cisco’s TelePresence and Internet of Things groups. He has lived in 12 countries including France, Singapore and the United States. Additionally, he worked for Cisco as IT Director for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region and in the Internet Business Solutions Group.

Jouret left Cisco in 2014 to join Envision Energy, where he led the software products business, including a platform for the emerging energy internet. Jouret has been Chief Technical Officer at Nokia Technologies since April 2015, and recently drove a major acquisition in the digital health sector.

“Guido Jouret is a proven leader in the digital revolution, with a solid track record in creating and growing new businesses as well as in the digital transformation of mature businesses. His global digitalization experience spans across companies in utilities, industry and transport & infrastructure,” said CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer. “With his customer and innovation focus, and his extensive international technology business experience, he is the ideal person to take the software-led differentiation of our offerings to the next level and to cement ABB’s pioneering technology leadership, building on our more than 40 years’ history in embedded, control and applications software and our strong position in the Internet of Things, Services and People.”

Jouret will work from ABB’s Silicon Valley and Zurich offices.

He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in the UK in 1991, and has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the US. He is married and has two children.

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