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Shift 8: The Internet of and for Things

The tipping point: 1 trillion sensors connected to the internet

By 2025: 89% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred
With continuously increasing computing power and falling hardware prices (still in line with Moore’s
Law90), it is economically feasible to connect literally anything to the internet. Intelligent sensors are
already available at very competitive prices. All things will be smart and connected to the internet,
enabling greater communication and new data-driven services based on increased analytics
capabilities.
A recent study looked into how sensors can be used to monitor animal health and behaviour.91 It
demonstrates how sensors wired in cattle can communicate to each other through a mobile phone
network, and can provide real-time data on cattle conditions from anywhere.
Experts suggest that, in the future, every (physical) product could be connected to ubiquitous
communication infrastructure, and sensors everywhere will allow people to fully perceive their
environment.

Positive impacts
– Increased efficiency in using resources
– Rise in productivity
– Improved quality of life
– Effect on the environment
– Lower cost of delivering services
– More transparency around the use and state of resources
– Safety (e.g. planes, food)
– Efficiency (logistics)
– More demand for storage and bandwidth
– Shift in labour markets and skills
– Creation of new businesses
– Even hard, real-time applications feasible in standard communication networks
– Design of products to be “digitally connectable”
– Addition of digital services on top of products
– Digital twin provides precise data for monitoring, controlling and predicting
– Digital twin becomes active participant in business, information and social processes
– Things will be enabled to perceive their environment comprehensively, and react and act
autonomously
– Generation of additional knowledge, and value based on connected “smart” things

Negative impacts
– Privacy
– Job losses for unskilled labour
– Hacking, security threat (e.g. utility grid)
– More complexity and loss of control

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Unknown, or cuts both ways

– Shift in business model: asset rental/usage, not ownership (appliances as a service)
– Business model impacted by the value of the data
– Every company potentially a software company
– New businesses: selling data
– Change in frameworks to think about privacy
– Massively distributed infrastructure for information technologies
– Automation of knowledge work (e.g. analyses, assessments, diagnoses)
– Consequences of a potential “digital Pearl Harbor” (i.e. digital hackers or terrorists paralysing
infrastructure, leading to no food, fuel and power for weeks)
– Higher utilization rates (e.g. cars, machines, tools, equipment, infrastructure)

The shift in action

The Ford GT has 10 million lines of computer code in it.
Source: http://rewrite.ca.com/us/articles/security/iot-is-bringing-lots-of-code-to-your-car-
hackers-too.html?intcmp=searchresultclick&resultnum=2).
The new model of the popular VW Golf has 54 computer processing units; as many as 700 data points
get processed in the vehicle, generating six gigabytes of data per car.
Source: “IT-Enabled Products and Services and IoT”, Roundtable on Digital Strategies
Overview, Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, 2014
More than 50 billion devices are expected to be connected to the internet by 2020. Even the Milky
Way, the earth’s galaxy, contains only around 200 billion suns!
Eaton Corporation builds sensors into certain high-pressure hoses that sense when the hose is about to
fray, preventing potentially dangerous accidents and saving the high costs of downtime of the machines
that have the hoses as a key component.
Source: “The Internet of Things: The Opportunities and Challenges of Interconnectedness”,
Roundtable on Digital Strategies Overview, Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of
Business at Dartmouth, 2014
Already last year, according to BMW 8% of cars worldwide, or 84 million, were connected to the
internet in some way., That number will grow to 22%, or 290 million cars, by 2020.
Source: http://www.politico.eu/article/google-vs-german-car-engineer-industry-american-
competition/
Insurance companies like Aetna are thinking about how sensors in a carpet could help if you’ve had a
stroke. They would detect any gait change and have a physical therapist visit.
Source: “The Internet of Things: The Opportunities and Challenges of Interconnectedness”,
Roundtable on Digital Strategies Overview, Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of
Business at Dartmouth, 2014

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