As Larry Bossidy stated so famously in his novel – a strategy is no good if you can’t execute on it. So what is the best strategy for putting the IoT to work? With the industry’s potential value of $11 trillion (according to McKinsey), you would think that the 75 percent of businesses that aren’t making it off the ground would have figured it out by now. The good news is that many enterprises are finally coming around. The following article provides some good insight into how to devise a good strategy for those companies that may not have as of yet.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been near the top of the technology-hype lists for years. In 2018, Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies ranked IoT platforms as cresting the “peak of inflated expectations” stage and ready to tumble into the dreaded “trough of disillusionment,” like a barrel careening over Niagara Falls.
It’s not that IoT has flopped; far from it. Everything in our homes seems to be connected. IoT devices enable networks that make possible smart speakers, smart TVs, smart thermostats, and even smart refrigerators that can help automate our lives. The consumer market, however, is only the beginning of what is possible through the IoT.
“What you see in the consumer domain is interesting, but it’s not where the economic action is,” says Rajiv Lal, the Stanley Roth Sr. Professor of Retailing at Harvard Business School. “Most of the IoT applications that matter are in the business-to-business space.”
