Proliferation of IoT and its implication

Proliferation of Internet of Things - what does this really mean to us?

It was my pleasure and honor to present "IoT & its Business Development" to one of Korea major Chaebol's CEO Breakfast session in May. I felt awe when I saw the number of standing signboard at the entrance. It was 195th forum. Wow, 195 consecutive breakfast meeting with more than 50 CEOs together? Impressive.

Anyway, I kicked off by saying some examples unveiled during CES and MWC such as connected crockpot, toothbrush(?), Belkin's Wemo switch, wash machine, car etc and then, explained the traits of IoT communication protocol. I explained MQTT as one of publish-subscribe based messaging protocol example for use of IoT. MQTT is light-weight protocol to fit into Internet of Things that is designed for remote location and characterized as, small code foot print, limited network bandwidth, high velocity, low battery consumption and "do not get "lost" in the event of a system failure" etc,.

And then illustrated some use cases such as connected car, condition based maintenance, smart city demo - Geo-spatial streaming data based integrated operation control and connected troops etc.

Merging of physical and digital world

As 1 trillion devices in the world are expected to start dialogue with each other, or 2 billion internet of peoples, it naturally lead us to imply the next question, " OK, what does this really mean to us?". Although some of survey unveiled the fact that explosion of data is the area where most of C-level executives were under-prepared, paradoxically it also implies the opportunity that we can extract the insights from these data explosions.

Way to plug our hands into the digital world

One symbolic example of merging physical and digital world is Myo from Thalmic Labs based in Waterloo, Canada. The technology that makes Myo possible — electromyography (EMG), which doctors and scientists use to record electrical activity from muscles —  is something Thalmic Labs have been experimenting. Co-founder Lake and Matt Bailey worked on a wearable device that could help blind people navigate using sensors. 

Connected Thermostat as 'thing' of a smart home.

Another example is certainly Nest learning thermostat and protect smoke detector.
As of today, the Jawbone UP24 band will have a setting that turns on the Nest thermostat when it senses its wearer has woken up from a night’s sleep. Mercedes-Benz’s cars will be able to tell Nest when a driver is expected home, so it can set the temperature ahead of time. Smart lights made by LIFX can also be programmed to flash red when the Nest Protect detects smoke, or randomly turn off and on to make it look like someone is home when Nest’s thermostat is in “away” mode.




Reinforce the firm's competitiveness within incumbent business boundary.

As world is getting more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent, firm needs to think about the way to gain competitive advantage from existing business areas.
First, instrumented means, data is existed as form of digital as we observed from above Myo or Nest case. Physical human motion and temperature can be converted into digital data through instrumented.  We should examine whether we can obtain the digital data from major touch points, and if yes, then map of collection.

Second,  interconnect the existing internal data first, and then beyond internal structured data, such as external unstructured data, social, streaming etc, so need to define the area to interconnect. Why? Because these efforts would eventually help the firm to understand 360 degree of customer profiling so understand the preference.

Third, intelligent. Ultimate goal of 'instrumented' and 'interconnected' is for intelligence. We need to study many use cases to learn how optimized data analysis facilitate the supreme services so eventually gain firm's competitive advantages. For example, as soon as you recognize the customer's event at any touch point (Nest recognize car is approaching near to house - in this case), you can analyze customer's preference from internal or external big data, so you can activate the very personalized recommended next best action (Pop up cool bear Ad at Next screen) to his/her instruments (in this case Nest or perhaps car navigator?).

Make new market with IoT

Inspire new customer experience engagement model:
With digital delivery capabilities, firm can internalize and enhance the customer experiences of every touch points through pre-designed system of engagement model. And then, firm may seeking the new business from adjacent area. In case of Amazon, once they conquered the book area then moved to adjacent spaces, such as CDs, groceries. In this case, it is essential to understand the emerging new technologies such as Big Data, Social, Mobile, Cloud and IoT.

Examine the quest where innovation capability meets opportunity:
Diagnose overall organizational capability to the point where data can be augmented as major resources. Explore the area where firm can advance to new business model innovation from the combination of firm's core competencies and real-time predictable insights.

Epilogue

Explosion of data incurred by Internet of Thing is, not a threat. But this statement is probably only true to the firm who understand the implication of data explosion. People only see this as an opportunity when they can extract the insights from these data explosions. In order to this, overall organizational notion such as "data is firm's strategical major resources" is required. Also organizational obsession on customer experience is essential part of ingredient.

**The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.