IoT Design Manifesto 1.0: great starting point for your IoT strategy & products!

Posted on 28th February 2018 in circular economy, cities, collaboration, data, Essential Truths, EU, Internet of Things, marketing, open data, paradigm shift, privacy, security, services, smart cities, smart home, SmartAging, strategy

Late in the process of writing my forthcoming IoT strategy book, The Future Is Smart, I happened on the “IoT Design Manifesto 1.0” site. I wish I’d found it earlier so I could have featured it more prominently in the book.

The reason is that the manifesto is the product (bear in mind that the original team of participants designed it to be dynamic and iterative, so it will doubtlessly change over time) of a collaborative process involving both product designers and IoT thought leaders such as the great Rob van Kranenburg. As I’ve written ad nauseam, I think of the IoT as inherently collaborative, since sharing data rather than hoarding it can lead to synergistic benefits, and collaborative approaches such as smart cities get their strength from an evolving mishmash of individual actions that gets progressively more valuable.

From the names, I suspect most of the Manifesto’s authors are European. That’s important, since Europeans seem to be more concerned, on the whole, about IoT privacy and security than their American counterparts, witness the EU-driven “privacy by design” concept, which makes privacy a priority from the beginning of the design process.

At any rate, I was impressed that the manifesto combines both philosophical and economic priorities, and does so in a way that should maximize the benefits and minimize the problems.

I’m going to take the liberty of including the entire manifesto, with my side comments:

  1. “WE DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE. We pledge to be skeptical of the cult of the new — just slapping the Internet onto a product isn’t the answer, Monetizing only through connectivity rarely guarantees sustainable commercial success.
    (Comment: this is like my “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should” warning: if making a product “smart” doesn’t add real value, why do it?)*
  2. “WE DESIGN USEFUL THINGS. Value comes from products that are purposeful. Our commitment is to design products that have a meaningful impact on people’s lives; IoT technologies are merely tools to enable that.
    (Comment: see number 1!)
  3. “WE AIM FOR THE WIN-WIN-WIN. A complex web of stakeholders is forming around IoT products: from users, to businesses, and everyone in between. We design so that there is a win for everybody in this elaborate exchange.
    (Comment:This is a big one in my mind, and relates to my IoT Essential Truth #2 — share data, don’t hoard it — when you share IoT data, even with competitors in some cases [think of IFTTT “recipes”] — you can create services that benefit customers, companies, and even the greater good, such as reducing global warming).
  4. WE KEEP EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING SECURE. With connectivity comes the potential for external security threats executed through the product itself, which comes with serious consequences. We are committed to protecting our users from these dangers, whatever they may be.
    (Comment: Amen! as I’ve written ad nauseum, protecting privacy and security must be THE highest IoT priority — see next post below!).
  5. WE BUILD AND PROMOTE A CULTURE OF PRIVACY. Equally severe threats can also come from within. Trust is violated when personal  information gathered by the product is handled carelessly. We build and promote a culture of integrity where the norm is to handle data with care.
    (Comment:See 4!).
  6. WE ARE DELIBERATE ABOUT WHAT DATA WE COLLECT. This is not the business of hoarding data; we only collect data that serves the utility of the product and service. Therefore, identifying what those data points are must be conscientious and deliberate.
    (Comment: this is a delicate issue, because you may find data that wasn’t originally valuable becomes so as new correlations and links are established. However, just collecting data willy-nilly and depositing it in an unstructured “data lake” for possible use later is asking for trouble if your security is breeched.).
  7. WE MAKE THE PARTIES ASSOCIATED WITH AN IOT PRODUCT EXPLICIT. IoT products are uniquely connected, making the flow of information among stakeholders open and fluid. This results in a complex, ambiguous, and invisible network. Our responsibility is to make the dynamics among those parties more visible and understandable to everyone.
    (Comment: see what I wrote in the last post, where I recommended companies spell out their privacy and usage policies in plain language and completely).
  8. WE EMPOWER USERS TO BE THE MASTERS OF THEIR OWN DOMAIN. Users often do not have control over their role within the network of stakeholders surrounding an IoT product. We believe that users should be empowered to set the boundaries of how their data is accessed and how they are engaged with via the product.
    (Comment: consistent with prior points, make sure that any permissions are explicit and  opt-in rather than opt-out to protect users — and yourself (rather avoid lawsuits? Thought so…)
  9. WE DESIGN THINGS FOR THEIR LIFETIME. Currently physical products and digital services tend to be built to have different lifespans. In an IoT product features are codependent, so lifespans need to be aligned. We design products and their services to be bound as a single, durable entity.
    (Comment: consistent with the emerging circular economy concept, this can be a win-win-win for you, your customer and the environment. Products that don’t become obsolete quickly but can be upgraded either by hardware or software will delight customers and build their loyalty [remember that if you continue to meet their needs and desires, there’s less incentive for customers to check out competitors and possibly be wooed away!). Products that you enhance over time and particularly those you market as services instead of sell will also stay out of landfills and reduce your pduction costs.
  10. IN THE END, WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS. Design is an impactful act. With our work, we have the power to affect relationships between people and technology, as well as among people.  We don’t use this influence to only make profits or create robot overlords; instead, it is our responsibility to use design to help people, communities, and societies  thrive.
    Comment: yea designers!!)

I’ve personally signed onto the Manifesto, and do hope to contribute in the future (would like something explicit about the environment in it, but who knows) and urge you to do the same. More important, why start from scratch to come up with your own product design guidelines, when you can capitalize on the hard work that’s gone into the Manifesto as a starting point and modify it for your own unique needs?

*BTW: I was contemptuous of the first IoT electric toothbrush I wrote about, but since talked to a leader in the field who convinced me that it could actually revolutionize the practice of dentistry for the better by providing objective proof that  patient had brushed frequently and correctly. My bad!

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Servitization With IoT: Weird Biz-Speak, But Sound Strategy

Posted on 21st April 2017 in agriculture, automotive, circular economy, data, Essential Truths, Internet of Things, M2M, maintenance, marketing, paradigm shift, sensors, services, strategy

I love it when manufacturers stop selling things — and their revenues soar!

That’s one of the things I’ll cover on May 2nd  in”Define Your Breakout IoT” strategy, (sign-up) a webinar I’m doing with Mendix. I’ll outline an incremental approach to the IoT in which you can make some early, tentative steps (such as implementing Augury’s hand-held vibration sensor as a way to start predictive maintenance) and then, as you gain experience and increase savings and efficiency, plow the savings back into more dramatic transformation.

One example of the latter that I’ll detail in the webinar is one of my four “Essential Truths” of the IoT: rethink products. By that I meant not only reinventing products to be smart (especially by building in sensors so they can report their real-time status 24/7), but, having done that, exploring new ways to market them.  Or, as one graphic I’ll use in the presentation puts it, in mangled biz-speak, “servitization.”

              Hortilux bulbs

Most of the examples I’ve written about in that regard have been from major businesses, such as GE and Rolls-Royce jet turbines, that are now leased as services (with the price determined by thrust generated), but Mendix has a smaller, niche client that also successfully made the conversion: Hortilux, a manufacturer of grow lights for greenhouses.

The Hortilux decided to differentiate itself in an increasingly competitive grow light market by evolving from simply selling bulbs to instead providing a comprehensive continuing service that helps its customers optimize availability and lifetime of grow light systems, while cut energy cost.     

Using Mendix tools, they created Hortisensehttp://www.hortidaily.com/article/31774/Hortilux-launches-Hortisense-software-suite, a digital platform that monitors and safeguards various grow light processes in the greenhouse using sensors and PLCs. Software applications interpret the data and present valuable information to the grower anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

With Mendix, Hortilux created an application to collect sensor data on light, temperature, soil, weather and more. Now users can optimize plants’ photosynthesis, energy consumption, and greenhouse maintenance. Most ambitiously, it provides comprehensive “crop yield management:” 

  • Digital cultivation schedule
  • Light strategies based on plant physiology and life cycle
  • Automatic light adjustment based on predictive analytics (e.g. weather forecast, energy prices, produce prices)

The app even allows predictive maintenance, predicting bulbs’ life expectancy and notifying maintenance to replace them in time to avoid disruptions in operations.

In the days when we suffered from what I call “Collective Blindness,” when we lacked the tools to “see” inside products to m0nitor and perhaps fix them based on real-time operating data, it made sense to sell products and provide hit-or-miss maintenance when they broke down.

Now that we can monitor them 24/7 and get early enough warning to instead provide predictive maintenance, it makes equal sense to switching to marketing them as services, with mutual benefits including:

  • increased customer satisfaction because of less down-time
  • new revenues from selling customers services based on availability of the real-time data, which in turn allows them more operating precision
  • increased customer loyalty, because the customer is less likely to actually go on the open market and buy a competing product
  • the opportunity to improve operations through software upgrades to the product.

Servitization: ugly word, but smart strategy. Hope you’ll join us on the 2nd!

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Surprising Benefits of Combining IoT and Blockchain (they go beyond economic ones!)

Posted on 21st February 2017 in agriculture, circular company, circular economy, data, environmental, Essential Truths, government, Internet of Things, management, marketing, open data, paradigm shift, privacy, security, strategy, supply chain

One final effort to work this blockchain obsession out of my system so I can get on to some exciting other IoT news!

I couldn’t resist summarizing for you the key points in”Blockchain: the solution for transparency in product supply chains,” a white paper from Project Provenance Ltd., a London-based collective  (“Our common goal is to deliver meaningful change to commerce through open and accessible information about products and supply chains.”).

If you’ve followed any of the controversies over products such as “blood diamonds” or fish caught by Asian slaves & sold by US supermarkets, you know supply chains are not only an economic issue but also sometimes a vital social (and sometimes environmental) one. As the white paper warns:

“The choices we make in the marketplace determine which business practices thrive. From a diamond in a mine to a tree in a forest, it is the deepest darkest ends of supply chains that damage so much of the planet and its livelihood.”

Yikes!

Now blockchain can make doing the right thing easier and more profitable:

“Provenance enables every physical product to come with a digital ‘passport’ that proves authenticity (Is this product what it claims to be?) and origin (Where does this product come from?), creating an auditable record of the journey behind all physical products. The potential benefits for businesses, as well as for society and the environment, are hard to overstate: preventing the selling of fake goods, as well as the problem of ‘double spending’ of certifications present in current systems. The Decentralized Application (Dapp) proposed in this paper is still in development and we welcome businesses and standards organizations to join our consortium and collaborate on this new approach to understanding our material world.”

I also love Provenance’s work with blockchain because it demonstrates one of my IoT “Essential Truths,” namely, that we must share data rather than hoard it.  The exact same real-time data that can help streamline the supply chain to get fish to our stores quicker and with less waste can also mean that the people catching it are treated fairly. How cool is that?  Or, as Benjamin Herzberg, Program Lead, Private Sector Engagement for Good Governance at the World Bank Institute puts it in the quote that begins the paper, Now, in the hyper-connected and ever-evolving world, transparency is the new power.

While I won’t summarize the entire paper, I do recommend that you so, especially if blockchain is still new to you, because it gives a very detailed explanation of each blockchain component.

Instead, let’s jump in with the economic benefits of a blockchain and IoT-enabled supply chain, since most companies won’t consider it, no matter what the social benefits, if it doesn’t help the bottom line. The list is long, and impressive:

  • “Interoperable: A modular, interoperable platform that eliminates the possibility of double spending
  • Auditable: An auditable record that can be inspected and used by companies, standards organizations, regulators, and customers alike
  • Cost-efficient:  A solution to drastically reduce costs by eliminating the need for ‘handling companies’ to be audited
  • Real-time and agile:  A fast and highly accessible sign-up means quick deployment
  • Public: The openness of the platform enables innovation and could achieve bottom-up transparency in supply chains instead of burdensome top-down audits
  • Guaranteed continuity:  The elimination of any central operator ensures inclusiveness and longevity” (my emphasis)

Applying it to a specific need, such as documenting that a food that claims to be organic really is, blockchain is much more efficient and economical than cumbersome current systems, which usually rely on some third party monitoring and observing the process.  As I’ve mentioned before, the exquisite paradox of blockchain-based systems is that they are secure and trustworthy specifically because no one individual or program controls them: it’s done through a distributed system where all the players may, in fact, distrust each other:

“The blockchain removes the need for a trusted central organization that operates and maintains this system. Using blockchains as a shared and secure platform, we are able to see not only the final state (which mimics the real world in assigning the materials for a given product under the ownership of the final customer), but crucially, we are able to overcome the weaknesses of current systems by allowing one to securely audit all transactions that brought this state of being into effect; i.e., to inspect the uninterrupted chain of custody from the raw materials to the end sale.

“The blockchain also gives us an unprecedented level of certainty over the fidelity of the information. We can be sure that all transfers of ownership were explicitly authorized by their relevant controllers without having to trust the behavior or competence of an incumbent processor. Interested parties may also audit the production and manufacturing avatars and verify that their “on-chain” persona accurately reflects reality.”

The white paper concludes by also citing an additional benefit that I’ve mentioned before: facilitating the switch to an environmentally-sound “circular economy,” which requires not only tracking the creation of things, but also their usage, trying to keep them out of landfills. “The system proposed in this paper would not only allow the creation (including all materials, grades, processes etc) and lifecycle (use, maintenance etc) to be logged on the blockchain, but this would also make it easy to access this information when products are returned to be assessed and remanufactured into a new item.”

Please do read the whole report, and think how the economic benefits of applying blockchain-enabled IoT practices to your supply chain can also warm your heart.

 

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More Blockchain Synergies With IoT: Supply Chain Optimization

Posted on 17th January 2017 in circular company, circular economy, collaboration, data, Essential Truths, Internet of Things, logistics, M2M, management, manufacturing, marketing, open data, supply chain

The more I learn about blockchain’s possible uses — this time for supply chains — the more convinced I am that it is absolutely essential to full development of the IoT’s potential.

I recently raved about blockchain’s potential to perhaps solve the IoT’s growing security and privacy challenges. Since then, I’ve discovered that it can also further streamline and optimize the supply chain, another step toward the precision that I think is such a hallmark of the IoT.

As I’ve written before, the ability to instantly share (something we could never do before) real-time data about your assembly line’s status, inventories, etc. with your supply chain can lead to unprecdented integration of the supply chain and factory, much of it on a M2M basis without any human intervention. It seems to me that the blockchain can be the perfect mechanism to bring about this synchronization.

A brief reminder that, paradoxically, it’s because blockchain entries (blocks) are shared, and distributed (vs. centralized) that it’s secure without using a trusted intermediary such as a bank, because no one participant can change an entry after it’s posted.

Complementing the IBM video I included in my last post on the subject, here’s one that I think succinctly summarizes blockchain’s benefits:

A recent LoadDelivered article detailed a number of the benefits from building your supply chain around blockchain. They paralleling the ones I mentioned in my prior post regarding its security benefits, of using blockchain to organize your supply chain (with some great links for more details):

  • “Recording the quantity and transfer of assets – like pallets, trailers, containers, etc. – as they move between supply chain nodes (Talking Logistics)
  • Tracking purchase orders, change orders, receipts, shipment notifications, or other trade-related documents
  • Assigning or verifying certifications or certain properties of physical products; for example determining if a food product is organic or fair trade (Provenance)
  • Linking physical goods to serial numbers, bar codes, digital tags like RFID, etc.
  • Sharing information about manufacturing process, assembly, delivery, and maintenance of products with suppliers and vendors.”

That kind of information, derived from real-time IoT sensor data, should be irresistible to companies compared to the relative inefficiency of today’s supply chain.

The article goes on to list a variety of benefits:

  • “Enhanced Transparency. Documenting a product’s journey across the supply chain reveals its true origin and touchpoints, which increases trust and helps eliminate the bias found in today’s opaque supply chains. Manufacturers can also reduce recalls by sharing logs with OEMs and regulators (Talking Logistics).
  • Greater Scalability. Virtually any number of participants, accessing from any number of touchpoints, is possible (Forbes).
  • Better Security. A shared, indelible ledger with codified rules could potentially eliminate the audits required by internal systems and processes (Spend Matters).
  • Increased Innovation. Opportunities abound to create new, specialized uses for the technology as a result of the decentralized architecture.”

Note that it the advantages aren’t all hard numbers, but also allowing marketing innovations, similar to the way the IoT allows companies to begin marketing their products as services because of real-time data from the products in the field. In the case of applying it to the supply chain (food products, for example), manufacturers could get a marketing advantage because they could offer objective, tamper-proof documentation of the product’s organic or non-GMO origins. Who would have thought that technology whose primary goal is increasing operating efficiency could have these other, creative benefits as well?

Applying  blockchain to the supply chain is getting serious attention, including a pilot program in the Port of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest.  IBM, Intel, Cisco and Accenture are among the blue-chip members of Hyperledger, a new open source Linux Foundation collaboration to further develop blockchain. Again, it’s the open source, decentralized aspect of blockchain that makes it so effective.

Logistics expert Adrian Gonzalez is perhaps the most bullish on blockchain’s potential to revolutionize supply chains:

“the peer-to-peer, decentralized architecture of blockchain has the potential to trigger a new wave of innovation in how supply chain applications are developed, deployed, and used….(becoming) the new operating system for Supply Chain Operating Networks“

It’s also another reminder of the paradoxical wisdom of one of my IoT “Essential Truths,” that we must learn to ask “who else could share this information” rather than hoarding it as in the past. It is the very fact that blockchain data is shared that means it can’t be tampered with by a single actor.

What particularly intrigues me about widespread use of blockchain at the heart of companies’ operations and fueled by real-time data from IoT sensors and other devices is that it would ensure that privacy and security, which I otherwise fear would always be an afterthought, would instead be inextricably linked with achieving efficiency gains. That would make companies eager to embrace the blockchain, assuring their attention to privacy and security as part of the deal. That would be a definite win-win.

Blockchain must definitely be on your radar in 2017.

 

Lo and behold, right after I posted this, news that WalMart, the logistics savants, are testing blockchain for supply chain management!

 

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Blockchain might be answer to IoT security woes

Posted on 19th December 2016 in circular company, circular economy, data, Essential Truths, Internet of Things, M2M, management, marketing, paradigm shift, privacy, security, strategy, supply chain, Uncategorized

Could blockchain be the answer to IoT security woes?

I hope so, because I’d like to get away from my recent fixation on IoT security breaches and their consequences,  especially the Mirai botnet attack that brought a large of the Internet to its knees this Fall and the even scarier (because it involved Philips, a company that takes security seriously) white-hat hackers attack on Hue bulbs.  As I’ve written, unless IoT security is improved, the public and corporations will lose faith in it and the IoT will never develop to its full potential.

Now, there’s growing discussion that blockchain (which makes bitcoin possible), might offer a good IoT security platform.

Ironically — for something dealing with security — blockchain’s value in IoT may be because the data is shared and no one person owns it or can alter it unilaterally (BTW, this is one more example of my IoT “Essential Truth” that with the IoT data should be shared, rather than hoarded as in the past.

If you’re not familiar with blockchain, here’s an IBM video, using an example from the highly security-conscious diamond industry, that gives a nice summary of how it works and why:

The key aspects of blockchain is that it:

  • is transparent
  • can trace all aspects of actions or transactions (critical for complex sequences of actions in an IoT process)
  • is distributed: there’s a shared form of record keeping, that everyone in the process can access.
  • requires permission — everyone has permission for every step
  • is secure: no one person — even a system administrator — can alter it without group approval.

Of these, perhaps the most important aspect for IoT security is that no one person can change the blockchain unilaterally, adding something (think malware) without the action being permanently recorded and without every participant’s permission.  To add a new transaction to the blockchain, all the members must validate it by applying an algorithm to confirm its validity.

The blockchain can also increase efficiency by reducing the need for intermediaries, and it’s a much better way to handle the massive flood of data that will be generated by the IoT.

The Chain of Things think tank and consortium is taking the lead on exploring blockchain’s application to the IoT. The group describes itself as “technologists at the nexus of IoT hardware manufacturing and alternative blockchain applications.” They’ve run several blockchain hackathons, and are working on open standards for IoT blockchains.

Contrast blockchain with the current prevailing IoT security paradigm.  As Datafloq points out, it’s based on the old client-server approach, which really doesn’t work with the IoT’s complexity and variety of connections: “Connection between devices will have to exclusively go through the internet, even if they happen to be a few feet apart.”  It doesn’t make sense to try to funnel the massive amounts of data that will result from widespread deployment of billions of IoT devices and sensor through a centralized model when a decentralized, peer-to-peer alternative would be more economical and efficient.

Datafloq concludes:

“Blockchain technology is the missing link to settle scalability, privacy, and reliability concerns in the Internet of Things. Blockchain technologies could perhaps be the silver bullet needed by the IoT industry. Blockchain technology can be used in tracking billions of connected devices, enable the processing of transactions and coordination between devices; allow for significant savings to IoT industry manufacturers. This decentralized approach would eliminate single points of failure, creating a more resilient ecosystem for devices to run on. The cryptographic algorithms used by blockchains, would make consumer data more private.”

I love it: paradoxically, sharing data makes it more secure!  Until something better comes along and/or the nature of IoT strategy challenges changes, it seems to me this should be the basis for secure IoT data transmission!

“

 

 

 

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2nd day liveblogging, Gartner ITxpo, Barcelona

Posted on 8th November 2016 in aging, agriculture, circular company, circular economy, collaboration, communication, data, design, energy, Essential Truths, health, home automation, Internet of Things, m-health, maintenance, management, open data, paradigm shift, privacy, Quantified Self, security, services, strategy

Accelerating Digital Business Transformation With IoT Saptarshi Routh Angelo Marotta
(arrived late, mea culpa)

  • case study (didn’t mention name, but just moved headquarters to Boston. Hmmmmm).
  • you will be disrupted by IoT.
  • market fragmented now.

Toshiba: How is IoT Redefining Relationships Between Customers and Suppliers, Damien Jaume, president, Toshiba Client Solutions, Europe:

  • time of tremendous transformation
  • by end of ’17, will surpass PC, tabled & phone market combined
  • 30 billion connect  devices by 2020
  • health care IoT will be $117 billion by 2020
  • 38% of indiustry leaders disrupted by digitally-enabled competitors by 2018
  • certainty of customer-supplier relationship disruption will be greatest in manufacturing, but also every other market
    • farming: from product procurement to systems within systems. Smart, connected product will yield to integrated systems of systems.
  • not selling product, but how to feed into whole IoT ecosystem
  • security paramount on every level
  • risk to suppliers from new entrants w/ lean start-up costs.
  • transition from low engagement, low trust to high engagement, high trust.
  • Improving efficiencies
  • ELIMINATE MIDDLEMAN — NO LONGER RELEVANT
  • 4 critical success factors:
    • real-time performance pre-requisite
    • robustness — no downtime
    • scalability
    • security
  • case studies: energy & connected home, insurance & health & social care (Neil Bramley, business unit director for clients solutions
    • increase depth of engagement with customer. Tailored information
    • real-time performance is key, esp. in energy & health
    • 20 million smart homes underway in GB by 2020:
      • digitally empowering consumers
      • engaging consumers
      • Transforming relationships among all players
      • Transforming homes
      • Digital readiness
    • car insurance: real-time telematics.
      • real-time telematics data
      • fleet management: training to reduce accidents. Working  w/ Sompo Japan car insurance:
    • Birmingham NHS Trust for health (Ciaron Hoye, head of digital) :
      • move to health promotion paradigm
      • pro-actively treat patients
      • security first
      • asynchronous communications to “nudge” behavior.
      • avoiding hip fractures
      • changing relationship w/ the patient: making them stakeholders, involving in discussion, strategy
      • use game theory to change relationship

One-on-one w/ Christian Steenstrup, Gartner IoT analyst. ABSOLUTE VISIONARY — I’LL BE INTERVIEWING HIM AT LENGTH IN FUTURE:

  • industrial emphasis
  • applications more ROI driven, tangible benefits
  • case study: mining & heavy industry
    • mining in Australia, automating entire value train. Driverless. Driverless trains. Sensors. Caterpillar. Collateral benefits: 10% increase in productivity. Less payroll.  Lower maintenance. Less damage means less repairs.
    • he downplays AR in industrial setting: walking in industrial setting with lithium battery strapped to your head is dangerous.
    • big benefit: less capital expense when they build next mine. For example, building the town for the operators — so eliminate the town!
  • take existing processes & small improvements, but IoT-centric biz, eliminating people, might eliminate people. Such as a human-less warehouse. No more pumping huge amount of air underground. Huge reduction with new system.  Mine of future: smaller holes. Possibility  of under-sea mining.
  • mining has only had incremental change.
  • BHP mining’s railroad — Western Australia. No one else is involved. “Massive experiment.”
  • Sound sensing can be important in industrial maintenance.  All sorts of real-time info. 
  • Digital twins: must give complete info — 1 thing missing & it doesn’t work.
  • Future: 3rd party data brokers for equipment data.
  • Privacy rights of equipment.
  • “communism model” of info sharing — twist on Lenin.

 

Accelerating Digital Transformation with Microsoft Azure IoT Suite (Charlie Lagervik):

  • value networking approach
  • customer at center of everything: customer conversation
  • 4 imperatives:
    • engage customers
    • transform products
    • empower employees
    • optmize operations
  • their def. of IoT combines things/connectivity/data/analytics/action  Need feedback loop for change
  • they focus on B2B because of efficiency gains.
  • Problems: difficult to maintain security, time-consuming to launch, incompatible with current infrastructure, and hard to scale.
  • Azure built on cloud.
  • InternetofYourThings.com

 

Afternoon panel on “IoT of Moving Things” starts with all sorts of incredible factoids (“since Aug., Singapore residents have had access to self=driving taxis”/ “By 2030, owning a car will be an expensive self-indulgence and will no longer be legal.”

  • vehicles now have broader range of connectivity now
  • do we really want others to know where we are? — privacy again!
  • who owns the data?
  • what challenges do we need to overcome to turn data into information & valuable insight that will help network and city operators maximize efficiency & drive improvement across our transportation network?
  • think of evolution: now car will be software driven, then will become living room or office.
  • data is still just data, needs context & location gives context.
  • cities have to re-engineer streets to become intelligent streets.
  • must create trust among those who aren’t IT saavy.
  • do we need to invest in physical infrastructure, or will it all be digital?
  • case study: one car company w/ engine failures in 1 of 3 cars gave the consultants data to decide on what was the problem.
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Circular Company: Will Internet of Things Spark Management Revolution?

Posted on 11th October 2016 in circular company, circular economy, collaboration, communication, data, design, environmental, Essential Truths, logistics, M2M, maintenance, management, manufacturing, marketing, open data, paradigm shift, retail, sensors, services, supply chain, transportation

Could the IoT’s most profound impact be on management and corporate organization, not just cool devices?

I’ve written before about my still-being-refined vision of the IoT — because it (for the first time!) allows everyone who needs instant access to real-time data to do their jobs and make better decisions to share that data instantly —  as the impetus for a management revolution.

My thoughts were provoked by Heppelmann & Porter’s observation that:

“For companies grappling with the transition (to the IoT), organizational issues are now center stage — and there is no playbook. We are just beginning the process of rewriting the organization chart that has been in place for decades.”

If I’m right, the IoT could let us switch from the linear and hierarchical forms that made sense in an era of serious limits to intelligence about things and how they were working at thaFor companies grappling with the transition, organizational issues are now center stage—and there is no playbook. We are just beginning the process of rewriting the organization chart that has been in place for decades.t moment, to circular forms that instead eliminate information “silos” and instead give are circular, with IoT data as the hub. 

This article expands on that vision. I’ve tried mightily to get management journals to publish it. Several of the most prestigious have given it a serious look but ultimately passed on it. That may be because it’s crazy, but I believe it is feasible today, and can lead to higher profits, lower operating costs, empowering our entire workforces, and, oh yeah, saving the planet.

Audacious, but, IMHO, valid.  Please feel free to share this, to comment on it, and, if you think it has merit, build on it.

Thanks,

W. David Stephenson

The IoT Allows a Radical, Profitable Transformation to Circular Company Structure

 

by

W. David Stephenson

Precision assembly lines and thermostats you can adjust while away from home are obvious benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT), but it might also trigger a far more sweeping change: swapping outmoded hierarchical and linear organizational forms for new circular ones.

New org charts will be dramatically different because of an important aspect of the IoT overlooked in the understandable fascination with cool devices. The IoT’s most transformational aspect is that, for the first time,

everyone who needs real-time data to do their jobs better or
make better decisions can instantly share it.

That changes everything.

Linear and hierarchical organizational structures were coping mechanisms for the severe limits gathering and sharing data in the past. It made sense then for management, on a top-down basis, to determine which departments got which data, and when.

The Internet of Things changes all of that because of huge volumes of real-time data), plus modern communications tools so all who need the data can share it instantly. 

This will allow a radical change in corporate structure and functions from hierarchy: make it cyclical, with real-time IoT data as the hub around which the organization revolves and makes decisions.

Perhaps the closest existing model is W.L. Gore & Associates. The company has always been organized on a “lattice” model, with “no traditional organizational charts, no chains of command, nor predetermined channels of communication.”  Instead, they use cross-disciplinary teams including all functions, communicating directly with each other. Teams self-0rganize and most leaders emerge spontaneously.

As Deloitte’s Cathy Benko and Molly Anderson wrote, “Continuing to invest in the future using yesteryear’s industrial blueprint is futile. The lattice redefines workplace suppositions, providing a framework for organizing and advancing a company’s existing incremental efforts into a comprehensive, strategic response to the changing world of work.”  Add in the circular form’s real-time data hub, and the benefits are even greater, because everyone on these self-organizing teams works from the same data, at the same time.

You can begin to build such a cyclical company with several incremental IoT-based steps.

One of the most promising is making the product design process cyclical. Designers used to work in a vacuum: no one really knew how the products functioned in the field, so it was hard to target upgrades and improvements. Now, GE has found it can radically alter not only the upgrade process, but also the initial design as well:

“G.E. is adopting practices like releasing stripped-down products quickly, monitoring usage and rapidly changing designs depending on how things are used by customers. ‘We’re getting these offerings done in three, six, nine months,’ (Vice-President of Global Software William Ruh said). ‘It used to take three years.’”

New IoT and data-analytics tools are coming on the market that could facilitate such a shift. GE’s new tool, “Digital Twins,” creates a wire-frame replica of a product in the field (or, for that matter, a human body!) back at the company. Coupled with real-time data on its status, it lets everyone who might need to analyze a product’s real-time status (product designers, maintenance staff, and marketers, for example) to do so simultaneously.

The second step toward a cyclical organization is breaking down information silos.

Since almost every department has some role in creation and sales of every product, doesn’t it make sense to bring them together around a common set of data, to explore how that data could trigger coordinated actions by several departments? 

Collaborative big-data analysis tools such as GE’s Predix, SAP’s HANA, and Tableau facilitate the kind of joint scrutiny and “what-if” discussions of real-time data that can make circular teamwork based on IoT-data sharing really achieve its full potential.

The benefits are even greater when you choose to really think in circular terms, sharing instant access to that real-time data not only companywide, but also with external partners, such as your supply chain and distribution network – and even customers – not just giving them some access later on a linear basis.  For example, SAP has created an IoT-enabled vending machine. If a customer opts in, s/he is greeted by name, and may be offered “your regular combination” based on past purchases, and/or a real-time discount. That alone would be neat from a marketing standpoint, but SAP also opened the resulting data to others, resulting in important logistics improvements. Real-time machine-to-machine (M2M) data about sales at the new vending machines automatically reroute resupply trucks to those machines currently experiencing the highest sales. 

With the IoT, sharing data can make your own product or service more valuable. With the Apple HomeKit, you can say “Siri, it’s time for bed,” and the Hue lights dim, Schlage lock closes, and Ecobee thermostat turns down. By sharing real-time IoT data, each of these companies’ devices become more valuable in combinations than they are by themselves.

Hierarchical and linear management is outmoded in the era of real-time data from smart devices. It is time to begin to replace it with a dynamic, circular model with IoT data as its hub.

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Distributed Manufacturing by 3D Printing Revolution for IoT Comes of Age!

Posted on 12th July 2016 in 3-D printing, circular company, circular economy, collaboration, Internet of Things, manufacturing, paradigm shift

Two major developments in the 3-D printing world, from Fictiv and (who woulda thunk it!) UPS, make me think the time has come for “distributing manufacturing” and getting away from the old massive, manufacturing mentality exemplified by Ford’s River Rouge plant.

OK, first a confession and a little history. Being short & named David, I’ve always had a fascination with David & Goliath, and you can bet who I’d root for. I also was deeply touched by two visionaries in my past:

  • Steve Clay-Young, who used to run the workshop at the old Boston Architectural Center & turned me on to a neat, nearly-forgotten bit of WWII history: either Popular Science or Popular Mechanix (can’t remember which), organized a network of hobbyists with metal lathes, who played a major role in the war effort. The magazine published plans for turning metal for munitions, and these guys each worked in their workshops to make them.
  • Eric Drexler, the nano-tech guru, spoke at the Eco-Tech conference in the ’90s about his vision of a bread-box-size gizmo on your kitchen counter that would churn out all sorts of customized products for you.

Now, it’s all taking place, and I suspect 3D printing will be a crucial element in the IoT-based transformation of the economy.

 

                                   Fictiv distributed manufacturing model

Fictiv is a startup founded to “democratize manufacturing,” which just went public with its new “distributed manufacturing” service using a nationwide network of 3D high quality printers and CNC machines:

 

“We route parts to machine with open capacity so you don’t wait 5 days for a part that takes 5 hours…. We aggregate orders so every customer receives the benefits of large purchasing power….”

Perhaps coolest, “Parts are produced as close to customers as possible to reduce inefficiencies in logistics and shipping lead-time”  so that (for an extra charge) they’re fabricated and delivered in 24 hours, and otherwise delivered in two days.  I suspect that, just as having sensors on their products that results in real-time feedback allowing GE to compress the design cycle, especially upgrades, that this proximity and quick turn-around will allow designers to radically alter the design process by “failing rapidly,” just the way early spread-sheet software allowed business managers to do “what-if” hypotheticals for the first time.

By bundling orders, they give startups the bargaining power of large companies.As co-founder Dave Evans, an experienced product design pro, says, distributed, local manufacturing can even the playing field for smaller companies, especially startups just designing their first products:

“When ordering from a large manufacturing company, parts need to navigate through their complex system and then be shipped from the machine warehouse direct to the customer, increasing lead times.

From an engineer’s perspective, when you’re in the prototyping and ideation stages, time is everything and even a 1-2 day loss from a 3PL (third-party logistics player) matters significantly.

What’s important to consider here is that in manufacturing, things can and will go wrong. So when remote manufacturers inevitably have to manage errors, there’s a lot of complexity to deal with …. This is very evident in overseas mass manufacturing, which is why companies put engineers as close to the source as possible. It’s amazing how few companies consider the same principles during the early prototyping stages of a product when time is everything.

The beauty in working with smaller, local manufacturers on the other hand, is that parts can be picked up as soon as they’re ready or delivered via same-day courier, saving you the 1-2 days of shipping. In addition, if things go wrong (they always do), smaller shops have more agility, fewer organizational layers, and in general can respond more quickly compared with their larger counterparts.”

              3D printing at The UPS Store

Equally important is the continuing stream of 3D services being offered by UPS. which recently announced a nationwide on-demand 3D printing network.  The network will combine 3D printers at more than 60 The UPS Stores® and Fast Radius’ On Demand Production Platform™ and 3D printing factory in Louisville, KY. My friends at SAP will marry its SAP’s extended supply chain solutions will be integrated with the UPS 3D network and — most important — its global logistics network “to simplify the industrial manufacturing process from digitization, certification, order-to-manufacturing and delivery.”

If I’m correct, the UPS network will concentrate on prototyping at this point, but it’s easy to see that it could soon have a dramatic impact on the replacement parts industry. Why should the manufacturer warehouse a large supply of spare parts, just because they might be needed, when they could instead simply transmit the part’s digital file to the nearest UPS 3D printer, generate the part, and use UPS to deliver it in a fraction of the time.

Combine that with the predictive maintenance possible with feedback from sensors on products, and you truly have a revolution in product design and maintenance as well as manufacturing. It would also foster the IoT-based circular company vision that I’ve been pushing, because supply chain, manufacturing, distribution, and maintenance would all be linked in a great circle.

Sweet!

 

 

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Amazon Leads IoT With Comprehensive Services, Platform & Devices!

Posted on 24th May 2016 in aging, circular economy, home automation, Internet of Things, management, marketing, retail, seniors, services, SmartAging, strategy

Several months ago I predicted that Amazon’s Echo might become the IoT’s killer device, primarily because it is voice activated. It appears that prediction is coming true, which should give the entire consumer IoT a boost because Amazon is also providing a soup-to-nuts approach of devices, platform, and storage meeting a wide range of IoT needs, which puts a real emphasis on customer ease of use.

Amazon Flywheel

Amazon Flywheel

Even more exciting from my perspective, is that part of that success may be due to something I was unaware of that fits beautifully with my “circular enterprise ” vision of the IoT: Jeff Bezos’ back-of-the-envelope sketch when he founded the behemoth, of what he called the “Amazon Flywheel,” It’s as good an illustration as I can think of regarding my vision of circular organizations and strategy — not to mention their profitability!

Even the WSJ got on board with an article about Amazon in regard to the IoT, although it focused solely on Echo and its voice app, Alexa, and ignored the all-important mechanics that it also provides.

Amazon IoT Button

Amazon IoT Button

The latest step in fleshing out the ecosystem was the announcement earlier this month of the AWS IoT Button, modeled on its highly successful DASH button, which allows ordering more than 100 different consumer products from Amazon by simply pressing the button (the “button” is also now also available in virtual form as a software service, so that a number of products, such as a Whirlpool smart washing machine, will determine that the owner is running low on detergent, and automatically send an alert to her phone. A simple touch on the phone triggers a refill order from Amazon). The 1st edition IoT button sold out instantly!

It joins a comprehensive, and growing, package of IoT devices and services from Amazon that I suspect will quickly make it the platform of choice for the consumer IoT:

You get the idea: this is a conplete solution, from platform to cloud storage to devices to highly-personal (voice) interface.

 

And there’s that matter of the Amazon Flywheel that I mentioned previously.  I came across it in researching this post, in a blog post by John Rossman in which he referred to the Flywheel as “a long-tested systems dynamic view of Amazon’s core retail and marketplace business” (music to my ears: it was exposure to Jay Forrester & Peter Senge’s work on systems dynamics that first got me interested in cyclical processes, back in the late ’80s). He explains how this continuous loop leads to dynamic growth, especially in Amazon’s infrastructure offerings:

“When thinking through an IoT solution, what is most obvious is the end device.  But this is the classic “tip of the iceberg” in creating an end-to-end solutions.  The IoT Value Chain is defined by devices, connectivity, big data, algorithms, actions, and connection to the rest of the enterprise.  As more and more IoT Devices get introduced, a greater amount of data (both big and small) is generated. This data, once integrated with algorithms create a greater overall customer IoT impact generating more demand for more devices. All of these devices and services can be hosted on AWS and utilize their infrastructure capabilities leading to greater growth of the infrastructure. At this point, the loop looks familiar: infrastructure growth leads to lower costs, which means more services and companies rely on the infrastructure locking into a cycle of higher customer impact.  Amazon Web Services has several existing IoT enabling products include AWS Redshift, AWS Kinesis, AWS Machine Learning and recent acquisition of 2lemetry show that the big bet for Amazon is not in creating devices for its retail business, but in providing cloud infrastructure and software to thousands of companies needing to build IoT devices and capabilities.  This is the AWS IoT flywheel and the real business in IoT for Amazon.”

Yeah, but the bucks that it will get from Dash orders and from Echo ain’t shabby either. Keep up that cyclical thinking, Mr. Bezos!

 

PS: this also makes me more and more confident that Echo and Alexis can be the key to the robust “SmartAging” approach that I visualize because its use of voice will help seniors, especially the tech-averse, manage their health AND their homes and allow them to age in place healthily! Gonna have to get me some partners to go after Alexa Fund backing…

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My IoT Day Interview With Sudha Jamthe

Posted on 11th April 2016 in aging, circular economy, cities, data, Internet of Things, M2M, management, privacy, Quantified Self, security, seniors, smart cities, SmartAging

Oops: I’ve been preoccupied with all sorts of dreck since returning from my SAP event, so I haven’t been able to post.

Did want to call your attention to a long IoT Day interview I did with the estimable Sudha Jamthe, author of The Internet of Things Business Primer.  We covered a range of topics, including the state of the IoT in Boston (and my enthusiasm about GE’s move here, because of their track record of working with IoT startups and even individuals), how I got involved in my IoT-based “SmartAging” crusade, and how the IoT may make possible “circular enterprises” orbiting around real-time IoT data.  Enjoy!

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