A materials breakthrough doesn’t start in a lab; it starts with how people treat each other. From the show floor of Productronica 2025, Philip Stoten sits down with Indium Corporation President and CEO Ross Berntson to dig into how Indium turns a clear mission—solving hard material challenges—into real market wins by building a culture where respect, appreciation, and shared achievement shape every decision.
The result is faster ramps, cleaner handoffs, and partnerships that outlast any single product cycle. We walk through the Indium Way and how it shows up in daily practice: engineers collaborating across factories and time zones, heritage ideas from twenty years ago powering today’s applications, and meaningful recognition for both patent holders and quiet process inventors who make volume, quality, and cost possible.
That people-first mindset doesn’t stop at the door. Customers feel it in audits that become learning exchanges, in engineer-to-engineer conversations that surface risks early, and in a hospitality ethic that helps teams bring their full selves to the work when stakes are high. The heart of the conversation centers on roadmap co-creation. Instead of one-way pitches, Indium convenes half- and full-day sessions with pre-reads, exploratory edges, and a shared plan: test vehicles, response variables, staffing, and clear points of contact. That structure moves the relationship from “materials vendor” to “strategic enabler,” especially for tough categories like implantable medical devices and RF systems where faster, smaller, thinner is the daily brief. When trust scales—R&D to R&D, production to production—calls for help come sooner, iteration cycles shorten, and new products reach the line with confidence.
If you care about culture, advanced manufacturing, and building partnerships that actually deliver, this conversation will resonate. EMS@C-Level is hosted by global inspection leaders Koh Young (https://www.kohyoung.com) and Global Electronics Association (https://www.electronics.org)
