You can no longer have a serious and credible innovation strategy if you do not have a strong understanding of the digital economy and how the “internet of things” (IoT) will impact your company and industry.
This is one of my key lessons from a week long trip in Silicon Valley where I helped design and lead a program for senior executives from Koc Holding, Turkey. (Get in touch if you want to join a similar program).
I am not a first mover on these thoughts. Before our trip to Silicon Valley, I looked at IoT as something that was interesting and relevant, but also a bit too technical for most corporate innovation teams and thus not something that should be a top priority for corporate innovation efforts. Strategy, management, processes and people were more important. I did not really see the bigger picture.
I am converted now. You simply can´t compete in the future if you do not have a strong vision and understanding of how the digital economy and the connectedness of 50 billion devices by 2020 will create new opportunities as well as threats.
Some of my IoT and digital economy surprises from our trip in Silicon Valley include:
- Every industry will be profoundly changed by the digital economy and IoT. It is not just about IT-related industries. I heard about case after case in automotive, home appliances, logistics, farming, electronics, accessories and services industries.
- The connection between big data, digital economy, IoT, open innovation, crowdsourcing, the sharing economy and the maker community will create interesting opportunities for startups, but also the big companies that know how to execute on this intersection.
- Many companies – even the leading one´s such as Intel and SAP – are still developing their own understanding of how this works and they spend lots of resources on getting their organizations up to speed. A good example is the re-organization of activities at Intel as described in this article.
The importance of IoT and the digital economy is much more profound than what I had expected and this HAS to impact corporate innovation efforts in the coming years to a much higher degree than what I had expected. I write HAS to because so many of the corporate innovation teams that I interact with do not yet see the bigger picture here, but they HAVE to if they want to stay relevant.
We all have to learn more about this. Here you get some recommended starters:
Spend 15 minutes on Google. You will find lots of interesting insights that is relevant to your situation, opportunities and challenges. Start learning – that is the most important action right now!
