The agenda of the day covered several sectors that will be transformed by the IoT: transportation, health, energy, networks, home, consumer, utilities and cities. IoT will enliven the physical objects around us unlocking new sources of data, insight and value.

Marcus Weldon who leads Bell Labs summarized the prevailing view nicely: “This is not a normal era, IoT will touch all of us more profoundly than any of the technological advances previously and ultimately, it will generate more time”.

Nokia EVP Bhaskar Gorti reminded us: “We have a bunch of devices connected in M2M use cases. It’s very similar to the situation in the 90’s with the early Internet.“

We are at the precipice of a profound transformation, where the confluence of sensor, cloud and mobile technology will connect people and things impacting almost every human activity on earth.

Some insights shared during the day:

• We have entered an M2M era that will have pervasive impact across industries and spawn new, iconic technology
• IoT must take a standards based approach to integrate disparate devices and data and reach its full potential
• Security should be implemented from the start as trust will be paramount in building a scalable IoT network
• IoT analytics is essential in parsing signal from noise. Less than 1% of the IoT data generated today is used.

Implications for the entrepreneur

Entrepreneurs can approach the Internet of Things in two ways: as a business enabler or as a disruptor. An enabler is typically a horizontal solution applicable across industries while disruption is typically specific to a market vertical. In some senses, the Internet of Things is a misnomer for whichever approach you chose, it is less about the thing but than the service, data and people you enable. At the end of the day as in any business, it’s more about the people than the technology.

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