We knew from last year that there are many great businesses emerging in the IoT space and this year’s showcase entries proved the point. The quality was tremendous and we have been able to select companies from a range of verticals and business models.
If I had 10 pence for every stupid approach from a marketing agency or big corporate who wanted to grace an event we were running with one of their corporate executives who wanted to,
“Share a thought leadership piece with our audience at, what was your event called again?”
I would have made 70 pence this week.
I just had a little Q&A session with Tim Taberner at Eurotech and he said something unexpected: that the internet of things should become invisible to consumers. Of course the results will enrich people’s lives, but the system driving those results will remain mysterious.
More than that: many of the benefits aren’t accruing directly to consumers. We finished last year’s IoT forum with a panel on new business models in IoT, and one of the interesting points is how much of the value realised in the IoT right now is effectively invisible to end users – from process improvements to sustainability to deeper understanding from product data.
For various reasons I was revisiting Alex Osterwalder’s excellent talk from BoS2011 about Business Model innovation. It’s a great talk on a great topic: using a new business model is often overlooked as a way to produce some competitive advantage but can work brilliantly, as Alex explains…
Along with lots of lovely messages after we announced BoS UK, we also got quite a few questions. No surprise there, but we thought we’d share our answers to the most common ones. Please do keep sending us your questions, we’re really grateful for all the insight you’ve been sharing with us.
Interesting article by Alicia Asin at Libelium in GigaOm about funding for the Internet of Things. Alicia suggests there are three main sources of funding for IoT companies: Public, Public/Private Partnerships, Crowdfunding. It is a fair overview in many respects but I believe the article (and some of the comments) dismisses, unfairly, the impact of venture capital from dedicated venture funds AND indeed corporate ventures on the long term strength of the sector.
If you are making/selling ‘stuff’ that would be interesting to IoT hackers get in touch with Red Gate Software, quick!
They run a quarterly ‘Down Tools Week’ where people are encouraged to look at new things and consider their implications for the business and indeed the business opportunities that new things might create.
This is a fascinating read if you are interested in how you can communicate better – a free book from Nancy Duarte, a well known and regarded presentation expert.
Conference presentations these days offer offer the option of two alternate and equally unpalatable outcomes – boredom as slides with 200 words are read out word by word, or seasickness – as aspirational graphics swirl and zoom in front of an enthusiastically compiled Prezi show.
In the future no jet setting, glamorous entrepreneur/spy lifestyle will be complete without at-fingertips control for all of his facilities. It will even help keep socks dry after a jetski commute to work. And, er, lock colleagues in the revolving door.
I absolutely love this video from Mivune (clients of Zuhlke, a supporter of our CEO Tales). It makes me chuckle.