An executive’s guide to the Internet of Things

As the Internet of Things (IoT) has gained popular attention in the five years since we first published on the topic,1 it has also beguiled executives. When physical assets equipped with sensors give an information system the ability to capture, communicate, and process data—and even, in a sense, to collaborate—they create game-changing opportunities: production efficiency, distribution, and innovation all stand to benefit immensely. While the consumer’s adoption of fitness bands and connected household appliances might generate more media buzz, the potential for business usage is much greater. Research from the McKinsey Global Institute suggests that the operational efficiencies and greater market reach IoT affords will create substantial value in many industries. (For more, see the video “What’s the one piece of advice for a business leader interested in the Internet of Things?” And to see how experts believe the Internet of Things will evolve, see “The Internet of Things: Five critical questions.”)

There are many implications for senior leaders across this horizon of change. In what follows, we identify three sets of opportunities: expanding pools of value in global B2B markets, new levers of operational excellence, and possibilities for innovative business models. In parallel, executives will need to deal with three sets of challenges: organizational misalignment, technological interoperability and analytics hurdles, and heightened cybersecurity risks.
Opportunities beckon . . .

IoT’s impact is already extending beyond its early, most visible applications. A much greater potential remains to be tapped.

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New book 'Inventology' shows how today's inventors can tap big data, 3D printing, crowdfunding, and more

With the internet age and its endless possibilities in the realms of publishing, communication, and collaboration, opportunities have never been so widely accessible for creators. But how has our new digital world affected the pathways to invention? In Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World, out today, journalist Pagan Kennedy offers a fresh take on how the digital era has upended the traditional pathways for creation.

When Kennedy began writing about inventors for The New York Times, she soon "would marvel at how few of the people were professional inventors, designers, in corporate innovation labs." It led her to explore what it really takes to invent. Drawing from that experience, Kennedy debunks common misconceptions about how great inventions are born, explores situations that have led to invention, and highlights gender disparity in the world of invention. TechRepublic talked to Kennedy about the big takeaways she learned during the writing process, and the relationship between tech and invention.

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Why Countries Need National Strategies for the Internet of Things

Just as the public sector was instrumental in enabling the development and deployment of the Internet, it must play a similar role to ensure the success of the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things offers many opportunities to grow the economy and improve quality of life. Just as the public sector was instrumental in enabling the development and deployment of the Internet, it must play a similar role to ensure the success of the Internet of Things. ITIF's Center for Data Innovation insists that national governments should create comprehensive national strategies for the Internet of Things to ensure that the technology develops cohesively and rapidly, that consumers and businesses do not face barriers to adoption, and that both the private and public sector take full advantage of the coming wave of smart devices.

A national strategy for the Internet of Things, if designed and implemented correctly, would maximize the opportunity for the Internet of Things to deliver substantial social and economic benefits

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A Look At Startup Opportunities In The Container Era

The DockerCon user conference recently concluded in San Francisco, and the evidence of the container movement gaining momentum was clear — 2,000+ attendees, 70 sponsors and more than 40 exhibitors.

Add to this the approximately $500 million of VC investment in container-related companies to date; the lists of hot startups that are beginning to appear; the anointing of new paradigms by respected investors; and the user surveys with record-breaking buying-intention scores and there is no doubt that the container wave has propelled the DevOps engineer as a new power buyer in the enterprise.

I expect that the impact of containers will be similar to that of virtualization’s impact on the data center.

The key difference between virtualization and containers is well described by Mitchell Hashimoto, DevOps guru and founder of the data center automation and management company HashiCorp: “Whereas virtualization is like the sci-fi concept of terraforming a planet, embracing containers is more akin to building many isolated biodomes on a single planet.”

Here are some of the opportunities in the container ecosystem:Virtualization created one platform company in VMware, and it looks like Docker’s visionary approach has been rewarded with a first-mover advantage. However, just as how a host of other independent players who provided adjacent services were created in the virtualization era, I see greenfield potential for entrepreneurs founding container-related companies today.

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The EngineerGirl website is a service of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). It grew out of the work of the Committee on the Diversity of the Engineering Workforce, and was launched in February of 2001. The EngineerGirl website is part of an NAE project to bring national attention to the opportunity that engineering represents to all people at any age, but particularly to women and girls.

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