Contact Info:

m: 630-258-6516   e-mail: milanakocic@gmail.com  

linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/milankocic

CONNECTING THE HIDDEN

My name is Milan Kocic. I was born in Belgrade — then Yugoslavia, now Serbia — and moved to the United States in 1986 at age 15, completing the International Baccalaureate program at high school in Washington, D.C.

I was drawn early to art, music, design, science, and innovation, likely shaped by growing up with a nuclear engineer father and an architect mother — creativity and analytical thinking were simply part of the household atmosphere. Through and after high school, I felt pulled toward product design, fashion, and music. But in true Eastern European fashion, I was given two acceptable career options: engineering or medicine. I chose engineering, which took me to London, where I earned a degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering and Economics from King's College London.

After graduating, I moved to New York and spent a year working in music studios — a natural extension of thirteen years of classical piano. I then relocated to Chicago for a consulting role, which led to a position as a technical engineer at a company that would later become Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence.

Over the course of my career at Hexagon, I moved across roles and disciplines: from technical engineering, to nine years in commercial sales, to product development at Zeiss (Hexagon's primary competitor), and back to Hexagon. For the past decade-plus there, I focused on building awareness of design thinking and UX while leading disruptive innovation and digital transformation initiatives. The products I built were shaped by deep customer insight and realized through collaboration with diverse, high-performing teams.

During COVID, I built and launched MyCare (now $60M+) and MyQuality (now $5M+) as service businesses. Starting in 2021 and concluding in 2024, I created, built and led the Sixth Sense Open Innovation Platform — pitching, building, and scaling it with a small external team.

I later joined GelSight, one of Sixth Sense's cohort winners, as VP & Head of Product, helping bring their new product, Modulus, to market. Most recently, I joined Canadian scale-up SmartSkin as Head of Innovation.

In many ways, my career has come full circle — back to where it began: innovating, designing, and building meaningful, functional, and beautifully useful things.

RESUME/CV

MILAN KOCIC

milanakocic@gmail.com | (630) 258-6516 | Pawtucket, RI 02860 | linkedin.com/in/milankocic

Business Architect & Innovator, Unlocking Unseen Opportunities For Transformative Growth

Product executive with a track record building and scaling industrial AI platforms, spanning hardware sensors, edge AI, and cloud analytics for global manufacturers in pharmaceutical, food & beverage, and industrial/process markets. Experience ranges from building new sensor-and-AI product portfolios to launching an open-innovation platform and growing a service line into a $60M+ revenue program, consistently translating manufacturer pain points into deployed, adopted solutions. Partners with engineering, edge/cloud teams, and executive leadership to align hardware, AI, and enterprise software roadmaps and drive platform partnerships that expand coverage and adoption at scale.

Leadership Style

Dedicated to delivering value and driving success with a leadership style characterized by an unwavering focus on both long-term strategy and nimble execution. Combines visionary thinking with the capacity to coalesce cross-functional teams, leverage enterprise resources, and foster a collaborative, transparent culture. Committed to developing and empowering team members, publicly recognizing individual contributions to reinforce a shared sense of purpose and ownership.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

SmartSkin

Head of Innovation & Partnerships, 2025 – 2026

Led product and innovation strategy for a physical AI platform serving pharmaceutical and food & beverage manufacturers, aimed at scaling business reach and widening the pool of market opportunities. Built a long-term product vision combining multi-modal sensor inputs with AI applications to drive proactive, platform-wide usage by manufacturing customers.

§  Established a high-level product roadmap to move the company from diagnostic point-sales to a scaled AI platform, expanding sensor coverage, delivering AI-driven outcomes, and improving customer-facing tools for manufacturing plant operations

§  Delivered platform partnerships to expand SmartSkin's reach beyond siloed operations, establishing ongoing work with Siemens and Rockwell to deliver industry-leading industrial AI capabilities.

Eigen Innovations

Independent Board Advisor, 2025 – Present

Advising Eigen Innovations on their scaling evolution. Close advisor to CEO providing unfiltered feedback on opportunities, competition and direction of product evolution.

GelSight

VP and Head of Product & Advisor, 2024 – 2025

Joined a post-seed startup to lead product strategy across a sensor hardware, edge, and cloud AI product portfolio, scaling a combined hardware and software (cloud and AI) roll-out.

§  GelSight was a winner of Second Cohort of Sixth Sense (see below). GelSight has grown by over 45% per year for the last three years. My role was added aid the ability to scale and keep the high rate of growth.

§  Currently partnering with industry leading companies to enable further growth of the product portfolio.

Optic Fringe

Senior Advisor, 2024 – Present

Advising Optic Fringe in their journey to full functioning startup. Looking at product roadmap, connecting to industry leaders and advising business models to be employed once out of stealth. Helped with NSF applications to gain the next stage of funding.

Hexagon MI

Founder and Head of Sixth Sense Open Innovation / Startup Revenue Acceleration Platform, 2021 – 2024

Proposed, built, and launched Open Innovation/Revenue Acceleration Platform for Hexagon MI (Sixth Sense – sixthsense.hexagon.com), working with 10-15 startups in Advanced Industrial/Deep Tech space per 12-week cohort to help scale businesses via connections to Hexagon products and Hexagon customer base. Managed $850K budget.

§  Partnered with external consultants and agencies to successfully launch a startup program within 6 months, leading development of 3 cohorts supporting 23 startups, resulting in 6 ongoing collaborations with Hexagon.

§  Elevated Sixth Sense startup program to premier destination for startups through marketing and PR campaigns, attracting attendees from innovation, startup, and VC communities and generating 250+ program applications.

Director of Product  – New Product Development & Innovation Services, North America, 2020 –  2021

Took on critical role to establish cohesive service-as-a-service structure, transforming ineffective hardware maintenance contracts into robust integrated support offerings, while leveraging customer-led innovation to enhance t customer experience and implement forward-thinking commercial strategies.

§  Transformed System Service Contract offerings by developing MyCare program, increasing system contract coverage from 800 to 5,500, tripling revenues to >$60M with a 65% margin and 85% renewal rate within 2 years.

§  Successfully transitioned MyCare into global program now offered in the Americas, EMEA, and China, significantly enhancing customer retention and engagement.

§  Streamlined Hexagon's labor-intensive contract programming process, developing  MyQuality portal, automating 95% of inspections and boosting business flow by 50% while positioning for further expansion.

 “Milan is a curious and passionate individual who likes to research, to play at the cutting edge of technology where applications and user requirements meet, constantly learning and exploring, a strong networker, someone who can marry commercial flair with the understanding of technology fundamentals to design and deliver on projects.”   – CEO Hexagon

Senior Product Manager - Global Product Strategy and Design (PROXI), 2017 –  2021

Managed products from inception to birth, working with internal cross-functional teams focused of delivering engaging experiences and transformative innovation to $1.5B division of Hexagon AB. Led internal strategy and product design group to transform user experience insights into innovative technologies.

§  Authored 30+ patents and successfully launched 6 products resulting in $100M+ in new product revenue through synthesis of user behavior research and design thinking methodologies.

Product Manager –  New Product Experience and Innovation, 2013 – 2017

Product Manager  – Software, Sensors, and User Experience, NA, 2011 – 2013

Returned to Hexagon as first product manager, responsible for establishing the product direction, development, and customer experience across the company's entire software and sensor product portfolio. Later transitioned to lead innovation and new product experience creation, driving customer-centric product planning, marketing, and offerings in global setting.

§  Drove revenue growth across product lifecycle by enhancing customer engagement and relationships, defining customer-centric product vision, and collaborating cross-functionally to deliver impactful product experiences.

§  Instrumental in establishing global program for IIoT implementation within HMI, integrating internal middleware and partnering with external providers like Salesforce, GE, Microsoft, and AWS to deliver comprehensive, customer-centric IIoT solutions.

Zeiss

Product Manager – Software - Zeiss IMT North America, 2009 – 2011

Oversaw product management for Calypso and other Zeiss IMT North America software, collaborating cross-functionally to develop sales strategies that drove a 50% increase in software revenue by enhancing customer workflows.

Hexagon MI

Aftermarket Sales Manager for Mid-West US and Mexico,  2002 –  2008

Led high-tech software and hardware sales efforts across the Midwest US and Mexico, driving over $5M in annual software sales by collaborating with direct sales and distribution channels, and solidifying reputation as company's top software sales performer by deeply understanding customer pain points.

Additional Hexagon MI Experience: Technical Software Sales Manager for Midwest US | Systems Integration Engineer

EDUCATION

MBA, International Business & Strategic Management | Illinois Institute of Technology

BEng Joint Hons, Electronic & Electrical Engineering & Economics | King's College London

SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTISE

Innovation, Startup Engagement, Product Management From Inception To Death, User Research & Experience, Prototype Development, Technology Trends, Connecting The Dots, Product &Service Development,

Innovation From Research To Birth (and Sometimes, Death)