Innovation Today - Notes From The Road

I am back from Vancouver where attended the Cisco Connect Roadshow event where I was able to get a feel of what they think is innovation of today thanks to the excellent presentation of Victor Woo, General Manager, Industry Transformation at Cisco Canada: "Fueling Innovation with the Internet of Everything". Notes below are some thoughts arising from and illustrating Victor's talk and other sessions.

Thanks to widespread Internet adoption and over 10 billion connected devices around the world, companies today are more excited than ever about the Internet of Things. Add in the hype about Google Glass and the Nest Thermostat, and nearly every business, including those from traditionally low-tech industries, wants to get on the cloud, track a group of devices, and gather data. The question, however, is not if a device can be connected, but why the company is connecting a previously “dumb” product to the cloud. Or stated differently, if a company invests in making my toaster talk to my lawnmower, is that really a good business model and why?
Companies that are successfully adapting and innovating Internet of Things platforms are focused on identifying meaningful opportunities, not just technologies.

Various forms of post-implementation maintenance will become more common, and may change how you deal with your vendors. The Internet of Things (IoT) goes well beyond human Internet users. Some predict that by 2015, not only will 75% of the world population have access to the Internet, so will 6+ billion devices.
Traditional business models focused on the sale of an item, with post-sale revenue coming from maintenance. The maintenance was usually an on-call service without real-time monitoring. Many will still follow this business model, however this model is vulnerable to shrinking profit margins in very competitive markets.

The world we live in is becoming increasingly complex and increasingly connected.
More than 12 billion people and things are communicating today via the Internet; yet it is estimated that more than 99% of objects are still unconnected.
Advanced standardization of communication protocols and the consequent rapid global adoption of IP and the Internet is moving from the information age into the networking age. The Internet provides the technical and human network to connect people with processes with data and things. As the Internet of Everything (IoE) connects the unconnected, it is expected that more than 50 billion smart objects will communicate freely over the Internet by 2020 and early indicators show that it might be a conservative estimate.


Acknowledgement:  Victor Woo, Rick Huijbregts, Gary Audin