Organizations attempting to build smart connected products across divisions, product portfolios, and markets are being faced with a stark reality: creating IoT projects is hard, and building a long-term organizational competency around doing IoT projects with excellence is even harder.
Based on real-world experience, this talk presents five key behaviors that successful organizations embrace when starting an IoT journey:
(1) baseline your current IoT competency in the areas of digital innovation, technology maturity, business model clarity, and market readiness;
(2) develop and communicate a clear, compelling, and actionable IoT strategy across the organization with executive support, funding from the top, and a mandate for cross-departmental collaboration;
(3) start small with early wins targeted at reducing risk and answering pressing questions early;
(4) look for opportunities to standardize and reuse common components across divisions and projects, and;
(5) close the knowledge gap by building the organization from the outside in — start with external help and in parallel develop internal core IoT competencies.
Finally, this talk concludes with a discussion about how smart connected products will redefine entire markets and the very nature of competition over the coming decade, and that the key to success tomorrow will be directly proportional to an organization’s ability to transform themselves into a digital enterprise today.
