The next big thing is here!

March 27, 2017

technology-adoption-ratesIt’s ten years since iPhone came to market and created a new world of smartphones and apps. It feels like they have been and will be here forever. Given the pace of tech development it is time for the next big thing but it is hard to see any candidates. Glasses and wristbands are accessories and not even close. VR and AR are interesting but probably not what we are looking for. When we look back at 2017 we will see that the next big thing  was internet again, this time with things added to it!

When internet surfaced last time we had little or no idea of the impact it would make to countries, businesses and people around the world. We went through the three phases: connectivity, operational value and strategic value in maybe ten years and the impact has been in the ball park of electricity. Now when we are adding things to the people and organisations already at internet we will go through exactly the same thing again. Connectivity (remember the 50 billion devices) is soon behind us now when we finally get the missing low power infrastructure for IoT, LPWAN. Since hardware is more difficult to connect than people the first phase will take quite a lot of time, but the two following ones – operational and strategic value –  will be much faster since everything needed already is available on internet. We already see companies leveraging things connected to internet today – look at the four nominees to the IoT Enterprise of the Year award in Sweden: Verisure, Volvo Cars, Husqvarna and Assa Abloy – and this is about to explode across industries and countries. The core deliverables from things connected to internet are safety, sustainability and efficiency i.e. what you will find in most priority lists of today.

In essence: if you want to understand how IoT will develop, try remember how internet happened last time. If you want to understand the impact of IoT, take a sober look at what internet has done to you, your industry, your society and the world. If you want to keep your job and save your company, get going. Internet is the next big thing, again, and we are already in the middle of the revolution. This time ignorance will be no acceptable excuse.

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Small and big companies must learn how to work together

July 22, 2016

thingsenterprisecircleThe pace of technological development remains vivid and it takes great people and sharp focus to understand what to use it for and how. Like if this wasn’t challenging enough, a new generation of internet is rapidly emerging where things are added to the people and organisations already connected. The three key deliverables from IoT are efficiency, security and sustainability and this alone will make huge impact on business and society. Almost everything will be affected why it’s vital to start work on risks and opportunities in all fields now. The only big difference from when Internet arrived is that ignorance will not be an acceptable excuse this time.

Imagine combining 3D scanning, Internet, data analytics, design software and 3D printing. What would that do to fashion, retail, healthcare and distribution? Or heat cameras, drones, Internet, cloud computing and data analytics. What could that do to fire fighting, border control, building management and search for lost people.

We are facing huge change in the magnitude of when we went from farming to industry and it’s really time to start working on all the opportunities and issues.

Most new solutions involve connected hardware which makes life somewhat more difficult. Hardware adds complexity and time, requires financing, impact the environment directly and increase financial risks. Large scale manufacturing has moved to developing countries and with that also experience and skills. It’s quite easy to see the value added by data from the connected things but unless someone connect them there will be no data. We simply will have to cope with the fact that things will stay in the physical world even if the virtual world is much easier and faster to work with. One important implication of that is that innovative and successful startups with hardware as part of their solution hardly can scale up to become global since it will take too long time. This is why we have to learn how to transform innovation in sharp startups to value creation in large international companies.

We started the hardware hub THINGS downtown Stockholm in March 2015 to learn how to make this transformation. We have some 30 carefully selected startups and Sweden’s biggest maker organisation in our 2000 m2 building at the campus of KTH Royal Institute of Technology. And we have a handful of export companies including ABB, Assa Abloy, NCC and Husqvarna as main partners. Since hardware is too broad we focus on themes agreed with our partners and these are IoT, sensors, wearables, 3D scanning/printing, automation and robotics. We have been practicing for over a year now with all types of meetings, events and workshops with our industry partners and other enterprises including Deutsche Telekom, Daimler, l’Oreal, Airbus and Nike. By now we have learnt enough to scale up our efforts and involve more startups and enterprises. The current startup community involved includes some 150 startups now and in June we launched THINGS Enterprise Circle to build a community of Swedish and international enterprises who want us to help start or accelerate their technology innovation and digitalisation efforts.

At this point it’s clear to me that efforts to learn how to transform innovation from small to large companies have to be based on processes not one-off events, absolutely common interest (i.e. IoT and hardware are far too generic but battery technology and energy harvesting or wearables are ok) and really careful selection of companies and people for workshops. The purpose of a workshop is to inspire and bring new ideas and approaches to the enterprise and the aim is to have the enterprise to buy projects and prototypes from the startups to get the collaboration going.

Small and large companies who learn how to work together in an efficient and mutually beneficial manner will be the winners in the networked society. We are determined to figure out how to make this happen at THINGS and welcome enterprises and startups who want to be part of our journey.

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Startups are kids of industries

April 12, 2016

kids-835146_1280Startups is not an industry, they are kids of industries in the same way as kids are young adults. This quite simple insight provides some good guidelines for dealing with startups.

Even if you can, it’s not nice to make money on kids or startups. They need good and sometimes firm guidance, a lot of care, reasonable challenges and a lot of love to become great adults, and then they might be able to deliver some returns. But the best coaches get their kicks from seeing them grow, learn and develop, sharing their success and enjoying the feeling of having played a role in the miracle. I question anyone who see startups as a market or business opportunity by itself. I don’t include investors since their bet is to get some returns when the startup has grown up and create themselves an incentive to help.

It is very valuable for kids to be with older and experienced people since they can provide a lot of experience and wisdom. The same goes for startups – being with grown up companies in the industry they target is immensely valuable. Established companies can provide feedback to plans and prototypes, advice on choice of partners and go to market approaches and so on. But they can also pay  them little to provide a prototype, POC or study the same way my grandmother paid me 1$ to cut her lawn – a great combination of making some money, getting a reference and still do something useful for the customer. I believe, generally speaking, that this is a much better approach than giving the kids 1000$ to go figure out something great.

Technology develops rapidly why innovation requires very sharp focus on technology and application. Since building a large international company from scratch takes a lot of time it’s often a better way to integrate the innovation in an exist large company to create value. With large organisations having to bring in innovation from outside and startups having to get their innovation into established companies’ solutions, channels and marketing those who learn how to do that well will be successful. This is exactly what we try to learn at THINGS, together with the sharpest hardware oriented startups in IoT, wearables, 3D scanning/printing, automation, robotics and medtech, and our open-minded industry partners like Assa Abloy, Husqvarna, ABB and NCC.

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Back again!

June 1, 2015

Dear readers, I have to apologise for not having posted more than a couple of posts this year. The reason is that I have worked really hard together with Linda, Carolina and Pär to build THINGS™, our new 2000 m2 co-working space for start-ups with hardware as part of their solutions, at KTH Campus dowLogo3_green+wntown Stockholm. We started last spring and opened our house officially March 26 with a great party with over 300 people. It’s been a fantastic journey  and we already have 21 start-ups in our house, and five industry partners: Assa Abloy, ABB, Husqvarna, NCC and SP.

This is a fantastic project, trying to exploit the perfect storm created when the two mega-trends IoT and Makers Movement meet. The best way of following us is by signing up to THINGS NEWS, visiting our web thingstockholm.com from time to time and following us on twitter @sthlmthings.

I remain devoted to IoT and my alliance for Swedish IoT start-ups, SMSE, now has 41 members and 13 partners. I’m now working on our annual IoE For Real™ event in Stockholm June 17 and the International IoT Get Together at THINGS the night before (sign up for free using code “connectcompute”).

From now on I will start focusing on my blog again. Nobody knows how IoT will develop and I believe it is really important with original views, thoughts and opinions from people spending their lives working with IoT. Today, on top of the Gartner hype curve, everybody want to be part of IoT and there are 13 announcements and competitions on a dozen right now. We need to put these right and put them into context. Most recently Google announced Brillo and Weave. I’m not very impressed and I will come back to that very soon in my blog.

Avanti!

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Watch out! Two major forces meet – interesting times ahead

March 18, 2015

Imakr 3D Shoes in the Machine and on the computerAdding things to the Internet will make extraordinary impact on industries, businesses, nations and people’s lives. And I hope it will make us take better care of our globe too. The three major deliverables of IoT – safety, sustainability and efficiency – together with convenience will do the trick. In essence IoT fuels digitization of processes and allows us to base decision-making on better, often real-time, data. Applications like preventive maintenance and scheduled repairs will make us tremendously more efficient to name one example. And one day “if it aint broken don’t fix it” might be hard to understand. The Internet of Everything is rapidly coming together and I believe we’re leaving the teens already 2016.

Another rapidly developing major trend is the Makers Movement. Equipment and tools have become much easier to use and really affordable. And new types of equipment like 3D printers together with a host of new materials and techniques complete the opportunity to democratise manufacturing. In other words a couple of people could easily get together and buy what it takes to make at least prototypes of their ideas. And that is exactly what has happened – there are makers everywhere, in more or less organised and specialised organisations, sharing tools, skills and facilities, training each other and building new micro startups en masse. FabLabs, TechShops and Makerspaces are popping up everywhere and 3D printing and scanning by itself promise massive changes on how we design and produce things, e-business, healthcare and so on.

It is hard to predict what will happen when these two mega trends meet but let me share a couple of observations to get going:

– It’s more difficult and resource consuming to design, manufacture, market and service hardware than just software
– Hardware requires more money and a wide range of expertise
– Working with hardware requires more physical interaction and relevant facilities
– Early stage investors are often reluctant to invest in hardware today
– Crowdfunding services like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are already loaded with hardware, often with great innovative design compared to mainstream products
– Apple combines gorgeous things with ease of use and Internet bringing continuous innovation and record profits

I find the meeting of these two mega-trends very interesting and have worked for a year with some friends trying to figure out how to turn this into serious solutions and big business. One important conclusion is that successfully making solutions with things included require great engineers, great designers, great entrepreneurs and internationally successful enterprises with things part of their solutions to collaborate with. That makes it a perfect fit for Sweden and I will do my best to help the Swedish hw start-up community become successful. We have started to use #sthlmthings for our community and I would welcome other communities to gather around similar hash tags to make it easier to follow and interact in and between “things communities”.

Things matter!

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