I\u2019ve been giving talks and having lots of meetings with executives across a number of different industries who are interested in the internet of things and aren\u2019t quite sure what to do. Based on the past ten years of my work around this topic, here are some high-level recommendations.<\/p>\n
Assumptions: chances are you have a research department or the product arm of your business is changing because your industry is changing. Latching on to the internet of things, AR\/VR, cloud and digital is likely to help you solve some problems but not all. Chances are you need a change of culture and a change of senior management. This article is specifically for your business if you\u2019ve decided to commit to #iot as a topic area and are ready to commit to it for a minimum<\/u> of 3 years.<\/p>\n Staff turn-around in technical teams can be high (especially if they\u2019re young) and chances are you\u2019ll be recruiting web developers, creative technologists, industrial designers and electronics engineer as part of a good team that can prototype new connected product ideas for your business. These teams, when they work well are self-sufficient and therefore a culture of quick iterative prototypes is developed. This culture clashes with the need for comprehensive documentation of each idea. Successful high resolution prototypes are one thing but the interesting little prototypes that lead you there are just as important. Making sure code, circuitboard diagrams, BoMs and demo videos are available is important to make sure someone in Marketing or the next technical lead can understand a development process.<\/p>\n You are joining a rich ecology of startups, government programs, tools and standards groups. You\u2019re not doing this on your own so you better get used to collaborating with others that may have competing interests but are much smaller than you and have developed better tools. It takes a particular type of humility but what you\u2019ll get out of it will stand out from what\u2019s being done by your industry. The point of the internet of things is the breakdown of industry silos. The trick here is to grow a circle of \u2018care\u2019 so work with people in a way that opens up your abilities and your contacts so they can do the same. That\u2019s why it\u2019s the internet of things and not the intranet of things. People expect APIs for your services and the open mind to go with it.<\/p>\n In light of the recent splat of press about the internet of things and security we have to work as an industry to give people the tools to know what they should do. We struggle to do this online already and when things are added to the mix of course it complexifies things a lot, but the opportunity here is for a decent amount of time spent with end-users, not just \u2018personas\u2019 who are so loved by some design thinkers. There\u2019s nothing like giving people something to live with for a while (be it either at home or at work) to get great feedback and highlight opportunities. It\u2019s not with post-its, it\u2019s not with ideas, it\u2019s with functional high resolution prototypes that you\u2019ll have to invest in fabrication. This means spending months (a long-term trial of the average social robot is 3 months) with customers finding out how your product fits. Only then will you have something that can change people\u2019s lives (at work or at home!) and only then can you help them understand the risks best.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t assume you\u2019ll be able to create value for your organisation quickly, getting teams to work together and have good ideas they can prototype and iterate (takes ages to order parts) and then getting something that\u2019s unique enough to showcase once a year at CES means that to get noticed and the right partners on board long term you\u2019ll have to do this for some years. You\u2019ll learn a lot and try to trust your team to work slowly but steadily. It\u2019s difficult when you\u2019re probably tied to whatever you can do within a financial quarter but if you want to change your business, that\u2019s the price to pay. Try not to change innovation managers too often that\u2019s really disruptive to the process and technical teams and jeopardises progress. Also give them a good budget, they have to buy machinery and parts! :)<\/p>\n Good luck!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been giving talks and having lots of meetings with executives across a number of different industries who are interested in the internet of things and aren\u2019t quite sure what to do. Based on the past ten years of my work around this topic, here are some high-level recommendations. Assumptions: chances are you have a… Continue reading So you want an internet of things strategy?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"So you want an internet of things #strategy? Thoughts while stuck in an airport.\u00a0#iot #blogginglikeits2006","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,30,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-internet-of-things","category-thoughts","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-Ba","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2305,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304\/revisions\/2305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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