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Proudly displayed on the wall of Belden’ s leadership offices sits a cherished letter that was written by Thomas Edison in 1920, thanking the company for its role in the inventor’ s innovations. Not just a piece of history, this is a keepsake that speaks volumes about Belden’ s future as well as its past. More than a century later, President and CEO Dr. Ashish Chand still labels the letter as one of the most precious items hanging in his workspace. It is a reminder of how integral Belden has been to new concepts, including the first radio transmission, the first television broadcast, flights into space, and infrastructure such as high-speed trains.
“ Across the board, we’ ve had the chance to participate in and enable many of these groundbreaking innovations,” begins Ashish.“ Today, when you buy a Belden product, you know it’ s going to work.” His statement of confidence is built on a 124-year history that began in supplying wire and cable and has expanded to complete networking solutions for industries such as mass transit, power transmission, and healthcare, where failure is simply not an option.“ Customers repeatedly turn to us when they have applications that cannot go down, because that would result in loss of life and property,” he emphasizes. Belden’ s reliability-first culture has contributed to both its longevity and contribution to pioneering inventions.“ We were always very focused on reliability, but that wasn’ t enough to bring us into the modern age – we had to support it with significant technological advancements.”
Nowhere is that shift more visible than in Belden’ s solutions; the company’ s approach to giving customers a single view across their manufacturing data. The logic behind these solutions came from observing how customers used Belden’ s products, Ashish explains:“ The analogy that came to mind was LEGO blocks. The LEGO company doesn’ t sell blocks – they sell sets.” For years, Belden’ s
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