For our December Spotlight Series blog, we spoke to Hub Member Christina King, Chief Commercial Officer at Tribosonics. Christina is commercialising a unique sensing technology in industrial markets to enable customers to create value and drive sustainability. Her trailblazing achievements have seen her win four tech awards. She is now working collaboratively with key global corporate customers to develop and commercialise new sensing technology in the energy, automotive, marine, and manufacturing sectors.
Christina’s background is in mechanical engineering with a stint working in the defence industry, building Challenger 2 main battle tanks. She later completed a full-time MBA at Leeds University Business School, followed by roles in
international management and ventures consultancy, These included delivering innovation support to the Carbon Trust Incubator and a business development role at Sheffield Hallam University, establishing the £14 million Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre.
In your own words, what is Tribosonics?
Tribosonics develops world-class end-to-end sensing solutions to transform industries through insightful data provision. Our team designs, manufactures and supplies integrated sensing solutions that combine innovative hard-tech with software and cloud-based data capture and advanced analytics. These then non-invasively measure and monitor industrial processes, equipment and components to improve energy efficiencies, reduce waste and optimise processes.
Engineering is all about solving problems. What problem is your innovation solving and what makes it ground-breaking?
Tribosonics’ technology gives customers increased visibility of their processes, equipment and components. This has previously been impossible without interruption or invasive procedures, all of which cost time, money and create waste. For example, component failure creates unplanned downtime and product defects.
By giving customers access to that information through an easily accessible dashboard offering data insights, they can make better informed decisions, reduce waste – supporting their drive towards net zero – improve productivity, and reduce costs.
In some applications, having this knowledge can also increase customers’ product quality and reliability thereby improving their own customers’ experience and brand loyalty.
What was the moment that made you think “I can turn this into a commercial opportunity”?
We were working with our customers in research and development domains on one-off sensing solutions with data capture to seek insights. We scaled these innovations through their products and services, which was a game changer and took us on a development and commercialisation journey with them.
Wading into unknown territory can be unsettling – what were you most excited by and what was most challenging for you when starting out?
We are at an exciting time in the market where the data revolution is happening. This requires digitisation, the data economy, insights, and offering better services and products to customers. The most challenging aspect is to work with customers to identify the value of the data: what pain point will it solve, how much is that worth, can it add more value than your competitors?
Can you share a time when failure mattered in your business journey?
Failure is a natural part of innovation. We use our sensing technology to extract data that has not been achieved before or never been thought about. Our team are experienced in taking an unchartered route and if that doesn’t work, we pivot. We provide the processes and environment to enable that through lab space, rapid prototyping facilities and test beds. We are proud to offer this to our partners and indeed this is one of our unique selling points.
What does a typical day look like for you at Tribosonics?
I get up at 6am every morning, take the children to their early school bus and work from home or travel into the office in Sheffield. First thing is always coffee and an informal catch-up with the other early starters in the office. I then have partner and customer meetings either onsite, at their site (can be global) or on Teams, commercial team huddles, supporting an engineering apprentice in their secondment to our team – it’s all energetic to fit it all into the day!
What impact has the Shott Scale Up Accelerator programme had on your business so far? What are the most valuable lessons you’ve learnt?
The programme came at exactly the right time in our scale journey and my development needs. The master’s courses in the UK with the cohort were relevant and on point and have fed into the business from a strategic and practical level. The coaching time allowed for some self-reflection and learning, which has enabled me to grow. The highlight was my weeklong course at Harvard Business School on negotiation, which has fed into building robust relationships where both parties are winning from the collaboration.
Quick fire
Who is your role model? Strong women smashing it in the tech space.
Tell us a random fact not many people know about you: I’ve completed the SAS assault course when I was a sergeant in the Air Training Corp leadership programme.
What’s your guilty pleasure? My teenager's novels
When I was a child, I wanted to be… a fighter pilot
I am currently binging... Downton Abbey – we were late to the party!
Best piece of advice you’ve ever received? Go in with solutions and pitch what you can do for the business – this was a redundancy pool situation and needless to say I kept my job!
Conversely, what has been the worst piece of advice? No advice is bad, it’s what you do with it that counts.
Who would you invite to your dream dinner party? Madonna, Lady Diana, Tim Ferris, Gary Oldman
If you were an investor, which Hub Member would you invest in? Lewis Hornby from Jelly Drops
Is there something you know now that you wish someone had told you when you started? No as sometimes that constrains thinking and possibilities.
If you had to start all over again, would you do anything differently? Be more bold and confident in my ideas.
To keep up to date, you can follow Tribosonics on LinkedIn and X (formerly known as Twitter).
The Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub supports the UK’s brightest technology and engineering entrepreneurs to realise their potential.
We run four programmes for entrepreneurial engineers at different career stages. Each one offers equity-free funding, an extended programme of mentorship and coaching, and a lifetime of support through connection to an exceptional community of engineers and innovators.
The Enterprise Hub focuses on supporting individuals and fostering their potential in the long term, taking nothing in return. This sets us apart from the usual ‘accelerator’ model. The Enterprise Hub’s programmes last between 6 and 12 months, and all programmes give entrepreneurs lifelong access to an unrivalled community of mentors and alumni.
Our goal is to encourage creativity and innovation in engineering for the benefit of all. By fostering lasting, exceptional connections between talent and expertise, we aim to create a virtuous cycle of innovation that can deliver on this ambition.
The Enterprise Hub was formally launched in April 2013. Since then, we have supported over 350 researchers, recent graduates and SME leaders to start up and scale up businesses that can give practical application to their inventions. We’ve awarded over £11 million in grant funding, and our Hub Members have gone on to raise over £1.3 billion in additional funding.