Let me explain, using candies, why I wrote a book about IoT

You're probably wondering how I ended up here...

So, as it turns out I recently published a book with my friend and former colleague Martina Casani, "Come usare al meglio l'Internet delle Cose" (How to leverage the Internet of Things), available on Amazon and physical bookstores in Italy, for now.

It all started a little more than one year ago, and all the credit goes to Martina, obviously: most of our conversations at the time were about our struggles to find the perfect market positioning for Solair, the IoT startup we were both working for. We would eventually find the right recipe, but one morning I remember Martina losing it a bit while wondering how on earth an entrepreneur with little or no tech background could get the hang of IoT, if even two professionals like us, working for an IoT company, had that much struggle. I think I hinted that someone should think about writing a playbook, and that was all Martina needed to conclude that we would do it one ourselves and prepare an action plan. And one year later, bless her, here we are...

But, as Rome wasn't built in a day, our book wasn't born just because of our late-night, startup-driven frustrations. Allow me to use a story about candies, archenemies and orange-faced little men to make my point.

Everlasting-Gobstopper-as-a-Service

Willy is a weird - but nice - guy and owns and runs a chocolate factory. One day Willy invents a new groundbreaking candy, the Everlasting Gobstopper. Who wouldn't want a candy that not only changes colors and flavors, but can never be finished, and never even gets smaller? Naturally everybody wants to buy it. Business is really taking off, and you would expect Willy to be pretty happy.

Except he's not.

Willy, in fact, would need to increase the production of Everlasting Gobstoppers to keep up with the demand, but he simply can't: his factory - which runs on magic - is already as efficient as it can get, and he already employs all the Oompa Loompas - the only workers that know how to make properly good Everlasting Gobstoppers - that live in this world.

Without being able to grow its production to meet the demand, Willy will leave his customers without other choice than go buy candies from Slugworth, Willy's bigger competitor (and personal bitter enemy).

But all of a sudden Willy has an idea: what if, instead of just giving the candy away for good, he had his customers borrow it for a bit, enjoy the ever-changing flavor, and finally return them (after a good wash, of course)?

They could just pay a small amount every time or, even better, a very small recurring price that would grant them unlimited access to the candy. Willy would have to make sure that customer returned the candy in time, and had it properly washed, but Oompa Loompas reassured Willy that candies could be fitted with a timer and a specific sensor for a reasonable price. They claimed he could even see the status of the candies in real time on his desk (even at home, they said!), so that he could monitor the business at any time. Willy is just amazed by the magic abilities of the Oompa Loompas (not that it would be any risk of any Everlasting Gobstoppers shortage as they are, indeed by definition, everlasting).

The "Willy-Wonka's-Everlasting-Gobstopper-as-a-Service" was (despite the name) a huge success, and allowed Willy to keep the despised Slughworth a distant second for a long time. And all lived happily ever after, of course.

IoT as the enabler of business transformation

The moral of the story? Well, Willy managed to shift his business model from "product-centric" to "service-centric", introducing new technology to improve the efficiency of his business (production cost/revenue) while, at the same time, building a new customer loyalty scheme. In other words, Willy lead his company into a business transformation process that created a long-lasting competitive advantage that could help compete with larger-sized competitors.

The Internet of Things is a tremendous actor of change for many areas of our life and business: in the past years way too much money and energy have been spent trying to make Consumer IoT work without a ROI model, while underestimating (if not ignoring) the cash-cow potential of Enterprise IoT. In other words, while smart thermostats and wearables were landing newspapers' front pages, the first pilot projects connecting industrial products were proving that there was indeed a very sound business case, growing the idea that - maybe - was in enterprise that IoT could have that massive disruptive effect that was preconized for the consumer market. Today is finally clear that, while IoT still holds a potential to make cities, homes and peoples smart, it's factories (and what comes out of them) where the true, humongous, value is.

The fourth wave

And even incumbents are realizing this: a very good example of this is General Electric, one of the oldest and biggest manufacturing companies in the world, which is effectively turning itself from being a traditional goods manufacturer into a digital service provider. "There is no plan B - Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, recently said - it’s this or bust”.

The good thing is that the growth potential is even bigger for SMB's around the world, and the benefits that emerging countries can get are immeasurable, so is social impact: entrepreneurs need to embrace this change, that is now inevitable. The Internet of Things is now widely considered to be the driver of a new industrial evolution, a "fourth wave" that needs to be properly ridden in order to not end up swamped.

Thus, entrepreneurs need to acquire the right skills to read the phenomenon, understand its impact, assess the consequences and put in place all necessary actions to take advantage of the playground reset that a revolution of this magnitude is creating.

And this is the true reason that lead me to join forces with Martina in writing this book: I spend my work time building the tools that can make IoT real, build real-life "Everlasting-Gobstopper-as-a-Service" and it feels natural, then, to invest some time in making sure that people and entrepreneurs around the world will be able to make the most out of them. Like they say, even if we can't change the direction of the wind, but we can adjust our sails to always reach our destination.

Disclaimer

The views expressed on this site are my own and do not reflect those of my employer or its clients.