2017 Internet of Things Trends ... Blah...Blah..Blah

Harbor Research’s Outlook on Critical Trends and Forces in the Coming Year 

As we have in previous new year’s, we set about compiling the most important trends, forces and themes from 2016 to explore their significance and outlook in 2017. If, as many observers predicted a year back, 2016 was supposed to be the year that IoT evolved from hype to reality, it’s difficult to conclusively say that’s happened. Security is still an issue, blockchain has fully entered our vocabulary, machine learning, autonomous vehicles, drones, 3D printing, augmented or virtual reality are all still promising break through innovations and returns. 

And, so it goes with tech trends and on and on and on its goes.

The mere fact that no one seems to be able to agree on the meaning of the term ‘Internet of Things’ continues to challenge developing a deeper understanding of its combined technology and business impacts.  While leadership across industries is awakening to the imperative of “digital,” the relative meaninglessness of these terms leaves executives continuing to hype the concept in their marketing programs, have board meetings, conduct investor presentations and namedrop.

The extent to which these technologies are clearly understood by the C-suites investing in them is not clear. What is clear is that with the emergence of connected sensors, machines and new mobile information devices, the complexity of developing these systems and the related organizational challenges with driving organic growth is overwhelming to many companies. Because networks add yet more complexity and drive up the number of stakeholders and interactions and because just about everything will eventually get connected, we strongly believe that business model design is the most important challenge that needs to be addressed in the marketplace today. 

This lead us to a simple conclusion. Trends, forces, blah, blah, blah.

If we do not solve the business model challenge no amount of new technology innovation will likely change the game for any company. 

So we asked ourselves how should we be looking at all this? We decided we needed to look at business model design challenges and related technology impacts across multiple dimensions, including user experience, core technology, data and content, behaviors, skills and relationships. Based on our examination, here is how we see business model challenges and related trends for 2017 and beyond……

Download our 2017 Market Outlook Report Here

EXPERIENCE: Computing Finally Meets the Real “Physical” World

Today, we can make a computer capable of beating the reigning genius of chess, but we can’t make a robot capable of walking across the street as well as any normal two-year-old child because the real world is not a strictly regulated, closed system like a chess game. 

Of course, digital computing has radically transformed human affairs. But so far, that transformation has taken place on the computer’s terms. The marvels of computing have taken place in rigidly regulated, closed systems; so far, IT has floated blissfully above the profound messiness of reality. If you want the benefit of computing, you either sit down at your computer or stare endlessly into your smart phone. To this day, computing and smart phones are like a baby in diapers—cared for by people, coddled by people, tolerated by people and, rather astonishingly, people only expect it to continue to get cheaper, faster, easier to lift, and perhaps more entertaining, but they don’t seem to expect much more. 

Artificial intelligence, machine learning and the Internet of Things are all in some way trying to break from today’s computing paradigms to enable real-world physical systems, particularly as they become more and more intelligent, more interconnected and the data they contain an integral part of all information systems. We think the challenges with integrating these systems into our everyday lives will require a far greater understanding of the user’s needs in a particular context of use. Smart Systems and the IoT push this even further; computing power and networking is embedded in more and more of the objects and environments around us. Hence, the social, the state and physical contexts in which connected devices and services can be used is even more complex and varied making the need to re-think computing models essential to enabling effective or compelling user experiences.

TECHNOLOGY: IT and Telco’s Need to “Move On”

 When it comes to preparing for the global digital economy, most people assume that “the technologists are taking care of it.” They take it on faith that the best possible designs for the future of information will emerge from large corporations and centralized authorities. But those are big, unfounded assumptions. In fact, most entrenched entities are showing little appetite for radical departures from current practice. Yet current practice will not serve the needs of a genuinely connected physical world. 

As we have pointed out for some time now, the IT and telecom sectors have failed to re-evaluate their relationship to advancing technology and to their constituents. The business and technology paradigms to which these industries cling today are far too limiting, too cumbersome and too expensive to foster and sustain new growth. 

The IT and Telco “arms merchants” are largely dragging yesterday’s “sunk” R&D investments to tomorrow’s new smart system and services opportunities and conning most of today’s enterprises into believing they are investing in “new new” capabilities like digital, IoT and who knows what else.

From a Telco perspective, today’s discussions of smart systems still focus almost exclusively on communications, texts and entertainment but precious little on the information value. From an IT perspective, today’s cloud-obsessed enterprise IT function is a direct descendent of the company mainframe, and works on the same “batched computing” model—an archival model, yielding a historian’s perspective. Information about events is collected, stored, queried, analyzed, and reported upon. But all after the fact. The reason is simple. Today’s computing systems were not designed for a real-time, state-based world driven by pervasive information flows. 

We believe a critical step to move new digital opportunities forward is to give up on the idea that the IT and Telco players will solve very much of anything and start relying on a new generation of innovators.

DATA and CONTENT: Data Democratization Drives a “Post-Platform” World

In today’s world, information is not free (and that’s free as in “freedom,” not free as in “free of charge”). In fact, thanks to present information architectures, it’s not free to easily merge with other information and enable any kind of real systems-based intelligence.

What would truly liberated information be like? It might help to think of the atoms and molecules of the physical world. They have distinct identities, of course, but they are also capable of bonding with other atoms and molecules to create entirely different kinds of matter. Often this bonding requires special circumstances, such as extreme heat or pressure, but not always.

In today’s world of information systems, such bonding is not all that easy. We need to creatively evolve to an entirely new approach that avoids the confinements and limitations of the today’s differing platforms. We need to quickly move to a “post platform” world where there is a truly open data and an information architecture that can easily integrate diverse machine data, information systems and people – a world where smarter systems will smoothly interact to create systemic intelligence – a world where there are no artificial barriers between different types of information.

For a deeper dive, read our Failure of IoT Platforms piece 

We are finally just this year seeing new “post-platform” architectures emerging with new novel core enabling elements. The innovators we think “get it” are focused on new tools to automate the provisioning and commissioning of complex systems, tools to let users develop their own apps more intuitively and new information architecture and data management tools that allow device and machine data to move among users, owners, renters, and brokers in a more intuitive, easier and much less expensive manner. 

BEHAVIORS: Creative Destruction for Traditional Business Models 

Large corporations have many rules and policies that often seem completely disconnected. They have been creating language, processes and systems that seem to be a triumph of technique over originality. General managers, like cost accountants, claim to have developed uniform approaches for just about everything — including “organic” growth. In our view, mounting evidence suggests that most of the existing approaches to creating new organic growth in established businesses are of little value when it comes to disruptive opportunities like the Internet of Things.

So how have manufacturers continued to grow and create value? Global expansion; re-engineering; lean practices; corporate business systems, mergers and acquisitions — all reasonable strategies for growth and value creation. But the marketplace is rapidly consolidating, and the world is increasingly driven by new and unfamiliar technologies. What worked in the past is less likely to work now or in the future. For many companies, those strategies have already reached the point of diminishing returns.

Read about the current state of digital strategies in OEMs

Unfortunately, while most businesses are now attempting to embrace new technologies and making bold pronouncements about digital maneuvers, many are not yet embracing new business models of any kind. Thus, we believe they are in serious danger of moving aggressively to implement—by about 2020—an early 2000s strategy. In so doing, they will destroy value rather than create it.

RELATIONSHIPS: True Collaboration Becomes Like Pre-School; We Share Because We Care 

Today, knowledge and expertise largely resides in functional silos and systems dispersed across organizations. Acting singularly, functional organizations are constrained by the resources under their control or the information available to them. Legacy processes and habits inhibit any natural ability to communicate and work together to solve big problems or create new solutions. The smart system solutions we envision are a significant departure from today’s organization structures and relationships. Who will own the “platform”… who will own the “data and information”… who owns the “P&L”… who owns which piece, and for what part, or for how long?

We believe a whole new generation of smart system organizational “designs” are emerging today that cut across traditional lines of business ownership like Broadway cuts diagonally across Manhattan. The systems and platforms required to address critical smart infrastructure systems like transportation, water, the food supply chain, and smart cities will need to be based on platforms that enable fluid interactions but that are also “multi-company; multi-owner; multi-stakeholder; multi-user” and so on. This is, of course, a radical departure from today’s world.

These new businesses will be based more on relationship design and will better leverage the collective creativity and intelligence available from multiple functions across multiple companies and interlocking value networks. In this new world, they will freely share information and collaborate to ensure creation and delivery of effective solutions to a wide range of infrastructure and resource-based challenges society is facing.

But, is that really different than today; we think so!

The solutions we are describing here will have far less managerial hierarchy, command and control decision- making or proprietary ownership of ideas than companies have been accustomed to. These networks will be self-organized by manufacturers, service providers, partners and customers who are motivated to explore and develop ideas they care deeply about. Collaborative innovation will extend beyond ideas about new products and services to the very manner in which business is conducted.

SKILLS: Has Anyone Seen a Smart Systems Architect?

Genuine smart systems completely re-configures the relationships of people, machines and information devices to business systems and society. It must be built upon true, across-the-board digital computing and automation, accomplished by enabling everyday devices with a whole new generation of tools for managing rich, vast streams of meaningful data and intelligence. The goal is to organize smart systems that are self-sensing, self-controlling, and self-optimizing—automatically, without human intervention.

We believe this requires a new discipline where designers understand both technology and business architectures. We believe these two dimensions are becoming much more closely coupled and increasingly need to be viewed in close proximity. The two thrusts need to be mutually supportive without inhibiting one or the other. 

Learn more about the tools required to design smart systems architectures here

But that’s a tall order. Trying to coordinate and leverage the respective roles of technology architecture and business architecture often creates contention in today’s organizations. Just look at the endless attempts of IT organizations to deliver any real value to lines of business.

However, we see some new campfires ahead on the trail and what we think we are seeing is a growing number of the players who are coming to view the continuously evolving relationship between these “architectures” as fertile ground for innovation. They see that the design of the technology solution and the design of the business itself need to be interwoven and mutually supportive. We now believe success in either increasingly will go to the companies that recognize this skill and nurture it to the point where the organization can effectively utilize the combined potential of both.

On a More Positive Note…..

Given the scale of the apparent opportunity one cannot help but wonder if a more unified data management, application development and services delivery “post” platform will evolve to enable the “Internet of Things and People”… could a platform that integrates devices, machines and people, and also provides collaboration and applications capabilities as an orchestrator of the pervasive Internet of Interactions? We have, in fact, seen several new innovators emerge in the last year or so, including Fathym, n.io and SkyFoundry to name a few, that are providing a new generation of tools to enable a smarter systems world for the users willing to take the risk.

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