SPEAKER INTERVIEWS
Jochen Koedijk
Name one individual AND one company in the IoT industry that inspires you. Explain why.
Individual: Kevin Ashton. The pioneer of the IOT, who had a bold vision early on and kept going despite skepticism and resistance.
Company: August locks. Sleek industrial design and a practical technology (hardware and software) that reduces the friction to allow authorized people access to a home. The device is easy to install - no power tools required. August allows you to give friends, family, housekeepers and dog walkers a “virtual key” including notifications as to whose “key” unlocked the door. August also has auto-unlock and auto-lock features based on proximity of the homeowner’s phone.
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
When I joined ADT from Chewy, and before that Amazon, I immediately recognized that ADT’s privacy practices are a key differentiator for us in the security industry. My advice for anyone getting into IoT is to be cognizant of consumer privacy and forward-looking about how your products are designed to protect customers’ personal and data privacy. Good privacy practices extend to marketing, too, and we strive to implement privacy by design into all areas of our business.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses take IoT projects from pilots to scale?
Commitment, persistence and patience. Initial pilots are full of unexpected twists and turns. Things “break” and more improvements are identified as more customers interact with the product outside of a lab environment. Speed to market requires sacrifices to deploy products quickly; elegant scalability is usually the first sacrifice. However, there comes a point when throwing computing resources is not good enough to maintain performance and becomes too costly. The ability to handle volume is a great indicator of a well architected and engineered system. At ADT, we spend a lot of time testing and certifying our products to ensure they meet our high standards of quality. That step adds time to the process, but it’s critical to deliver quality products and keep customer trust.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
5G will significantly increase mobile bandwidth and therefore increase the power and throughput of IoT projects – the increased capacity will allow us to bring deeper experiences to customers, wherever they are. The advancement of AI will help scale the complexity of IoT solutions over time. Just think how, for example, natural language processing capabilities have advanced over the past few years and for all its applications on the go. These two together are a very powerful combination.
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
I’m eager to hear from attendees about what they want to protect and the role they see IoT playing in this matter. At ADT, we believe everyone has the right to feel safe, and we aim to always use the latest technology to deliver safety and peace of mind to our customers by helping them protect and connect what matters most.
Michele Turner
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
Hardware is hard. It's expensive. The margins are tough. Make sure you know how you're going to differentiate.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses from taking IoT projects from pilots to scale?
Capitalization - hardware is expensive to produce when you need to have high quality at scale. You also need a complete system - firmware, a cloud and an app - that's a lot of software engineers and many hardware companies lack the software expertise.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
AI is essential to ambient computing, which to me is the core of IoT. Right now, to most mainstream consumers, "Smart Homes" should be personalized and contextual, but it's not - it's still pretty rudimentary when it comes to context. We need AI to deliver on the promise of IoT.
What are you most excited to take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
I'm excited to learn about what other companies are doing and see what's new in the industry.
Beverly Rider
Name one individual AND one company in the IoT industry that inspires you. Explain why.
I do find inspiration daily within our industry but the biggest inspirations come from outside the industry. People like Simon Sinek inspire me to be a better leader and to help people “find their Whys”. Books like Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, inspire me to find the interconnections in life. Watching interviews with Warren Buffett, and Bill & Melinda Gates inspire me to try and change the world. And my favorite, Diane Von Furstenberg inspires me to be transparent, to speak my truth and to support other women in all that I do.
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
Don’t wait for 5G, start now. While 5G will enhance the journey, most of the components are here today so ensure you are future prodded but don’t wait. Your digital journey, is just that, a journey. The sooner you start, the better for your organizations success. Build a strong IOT ecosystem. IoT takes a village to be successful and no one company can do it all.
Don’t be afraid to fail, but fail fast. Digital journeys will have successes and failures and it’s okay to fail. It’s part of the process.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses from taking IoT projects from pilots to scale?
I believe there are 3 solvable items preventing the scaling of IoT projects. 1) ensuring all of the stakeholders who will be impacted are bought in up front, 2) Clear KPIs and ROI for the POC/POV which when hit, trigger the next enterprise wide implementation phase and 3)C-Suite sponsorship (including their understanding of the aforementioned KOIs and ROIs which trigger the enterprise wide deployment).
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
See my 5G article published on LinkedIn where I explain this answer in detail.
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
It’s always a pleasure to be with creative, inspiring, intelligent individuals who have different and unique experiences thank I do. I enjoy learning from the differing perspectives offered by Agents of Change, technologists, strategists and customers.
Rachael Schwartz
Name one individual AND one company in the IoT industry that inspires you. Explain why.
I am continually inspired by Peloton. Not only do they have a great product that has effectively brought the valuable group fitness experience into the home, they have done an amazing job leveraging user data and the connection with the user to create a personalized experience that gets better with time. Many companies talk about harnessing data to create personalization which leads to loyalty, but they are one of the few examples that do this well. Their personalization is manifested by personal dashboards, customized interfaces, recommendations of classes based on data that infers the user’s difficulty preference, instructor preference, type of class preference, type of music preference, etc., and personalized emails that highlight changes. In addition, they have extended into new business models (e.g. App only subscription) that appear to work well on their own, serving a much larger addressable market while also driving conversion to their higher revenue business model (equipment).
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
Understand the user experience before you build the components to enable it. So many large companies invest in significant infrastructure to enable a robust IoT solution before getting any user feedback on the final solution. Once they get that feedback, they learn where there over-invested and under-invested. Starting with design sprints that quickly get to a testable prototype goes a long way to focus the technical enablement.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses from taking IoT projects from pilots to scale?
I’ve spent my career working in large traditional companies who sell physical products through resellers to customers or businesses. The IoT programs I’ve been involved in typically enable new business models, new sources of revenue, and new types of relationships with their customers. The biggest obstacle I’ve found is helping senior business leaders understand and believe in alternative business models and the power of personalized relationships with their customers enough to be willing to approve lower gross margins on the physical products and invest in scale.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
The majority of users, be they individuals or business users, want a customized/ personalized experience that is simple to learn, use, and access. AI is the key way to deliver personalization and simplicity by collecting the data you have on the user’s behaviour (and that of similar users) and integrating it in the experience while maintaining a feedback loop for continual improvement.
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
I am excited to hear how others are thinking about using audio and voice to drive the user experience. What we see in the market today are lots of connections to the great work being done by Google and Amazon’s voice interface, but not much beyond that. I’d like to understand what is next for voice after device control and learning about the weather. I am interested to learn how people are thinking about marketing connected products to people later in the adoption curve. And finally, I’m looking forward to learning more about the impact of IoT on Aging in Place as I see huge potential benefits there for a massive and growing part of the population.
Shelly Palmer
Name one individual AND one company in the IoT industry that inspires you. Explain why.
Amazon's relentless innovation in IoT inspires me. They are fearless.
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
Don't think about technology, be singularly focused on the benefit your solution will provide.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses from taking IoT projects from pilots to scale?
The fact that most IoT businesses create solutions in search of problems. If you want to create a big business, solve a problem that a lot of people have and solve it so well, that everyone who sees it knows what it is, what it does and why they need it.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
In the near term, AI will advance everything and 5G will advance industrial uses of IoT. In less than 10 years discussing AI for a project will be like discussing a database for project today. In about 10 years, assuming things continue at today's pace, we'll see 5G in densely populated areas and, if we're lucky, good wireless broadband coverage across rural America (which, at the moment, is grossly underserved).
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
The most exciting part of the IoTC NEXT Summit is the opportunity to spend time with some of the smartest people in the space.
Antony Kim
Name one individual AND one company in the IoT industry that inspires you. Explain why.
[Don’t want to answer given that our law firm has so many clients in this space!!!]
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
Know the two P’s of IoT: (1) Privacy -- what and whose data is involved, how is it obtained, and with whom is it shared; and (2) Protection – how is the data itself secured, and how are your rights in the data (and its derivatives) protected.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses from taking IoT projects from pilots to scale?
A key obstacle is the required coordination and collaboration across dozens of diverse stakeholders. Take “SmartCities” for example, where dozens and dozens of entities must collaborate to fund, design, develop, build, execute, monitor and maintain a project at scale.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
Love the next-gen concept of the “Artificial Intelligence of Things” (affectionately, “AIoT”) – the convergence of AI and IoT to enhance the “smartness” of networks and systems that will bring mega-change to things like SmartCities.
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
I want to hear some audacious, crazy, lunacy around what’s gonna happen in IoT going forward – so we can collectively set our sights well beyond what seems possible today!
Sheila Hicks
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
I would say to focus on simplicity and integration. Consumers want us to help them in the decision and make it easy to setup and operate.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses from taking IoT projects from pilots to scale?
I believe upfront costs are the biggest barriers along with consumers trying to figure out how everything works together. Practical use cases are still vague so engagement ends up slowing down after initial setup/usage unless it is relevant to their lifestyle.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
AI will definitely transform the industry and bring experiences to the forefront versus just devices.
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
I am still fairly new to this industry, so I always look forward to connecting with people and hearing their ideas.
Lee Odess
Name one individual AND one company in the IoT industry that inspires you. Explain why.
Hard to pick just one so I will go a different direction and say that I am inspired by all the IoT start ups looking to break boundaries and who have the grit to ignore the statistics and persevere. I love the energy and innovation they bring.
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
One piece of advice that I’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT is…collaborate. You don’t need to go at it alone, with a huge investment and with all the risk. There are a ton of partners out there that are ready to help. And I wouldn’t look at the traditional partners. Some of our most successful IoT initiatives is when stretched our imagination and collaborated with people that might look weird to do so on paper but in the end was the magic behind the success. The IoT offers you the opportunity. Leverage it.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses take IoT projects from pilots to scale?
The main obstacle preventing businesses taking IoT projects from pilot to scale is delivering real consumer/end user value. Too much is focused on a cool gadget that after the coolness wears off, it doesn’t deliver true customer value so it sputters.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
It's all about the edge and edge computing. Super excited to see what AI can do for processing and what 5G can do for networking at the edge. This will open up the consumer value while also delivering on the trust and security consumers want.
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
I am most excited about the networking and opportunity to learn, listen and bring back ideas and thoughts that I can help implement into our business. I am also excited to have the opportunity to do the same for others.
Brigitte F. Daniel, Esq.
Name one individual AND one company in the IoT industry that inspires you. Explain why.
Felicite Moorman – STRATISIoT As CEO of StratisIoT, under her leadership StratisIoT has become a leading platform of IoT technologies in multifamily space. In addition to being fully committed to the creation of partnerships with diverse vendors, like Wilco, as a woman in CRE, she is regularly honored as a CRE influencer and CRE Power Woman. She is my inspiration.
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
Don’t fear the technology. It is inevitable. The key is to find good partners to help finance and integrate IoT into your real estate property or development. That will be essential to reaping long term value for investments and optimal engage of the tenants.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses take IoT projects from pilots to scale?
Finance, especially for retrofitting. Federal, State and City Policies should be considered and lobbied to help the CRE and Multifamily real estate easily upgrade to smart IoT and smart products.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
The entrance of AI and 5G will create limitless possibilities for the advancements of IoT. The key will be to make sure these technologies are accessible and equitable for the masses.
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
How we, as an IoT community will strategize and collaborate on mass integration within the CRE, residential and multifamily sectors.
Charlene Marini
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
It is important to think about how you’re able to scale your IoT deployments beyond the first use case. Therefore, I would recommend looking for a vendor that can be a partner in facilitating a solution that scales from initial pilots to production deployments.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses take IoT projects from pilots to scale?
Organizations often try to do a pilot to prove a business case with an attractive ROI, and do not consider the full operational needs for a scaled IoT solution. This can present obstacles when these organizations try to scale their deployments. For example, security, reliability, manageability of devices and the system supporting device deployments are needs that arise for scale, but are often not considered in pilots as the deployments do not demand these capabilities to drive the initial outcome.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
AI and 5G technologies will expand the types of IoT use cases, and enable greater returns from data insights and data-derived actions created by connected devices. 5G technologies will advance the capabilities for managed connectivity services, covering more of the IoT use case spectrum so that organizations can rely on vendors for network infrastructure instead of having to build it out themselves. This will dramatically lower the barrier to IoT deployments. Advances in AI will enable greater abstraction of complex technical stacks for faster time to new application deployment, as well as greater use of captured data for business value insights and actions.
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
I am excited to learn about how various stakeholders are advancing security and privacy capabilities as connected use cases expand for scale.
Brian Partridge
Name one individual AND one company in the IoT industry that inspires you. Explain why.
Ivo Rook, SVP of IoT @ Sprint I find to be personally inspiring. Reason is that he took a big risk coming to Sprint to drive an new IoT strategy and set of services capabilities. So far that bet seems to be paying off as their Curiosity IoT platform has been driving
significant customer growth.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses from taking IoT projects from pilots to scale?
Clearly defined desired outcome of the project upfront, include stakeholders from across the business, especially those that work directly with customers. Think big.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
Both are extremely important platforms accelerators for IoT in general. A.I./ML to help transform IoT data into useful business insights, 5G as the network to support any and all application performance requirements. A great combination between 5G and A.I. will be applying vision analytics on HD video feeds for public safety or smart city use cases.
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
I'm eager to hear about how my peers in the industry are answering the questions above, especially their strategies to overcome known obstacles and new use cases they are excited about.
Katherine Black
What is the 1 piece of advice you’d offer to businesses looking to make their first investment into IoT?
Ensure you are really making life better for a customer in a way that they are ready to adopt and not just doing something slick. Consumers can be slow to change habits unless there is a real pay-off for doing so. If your first investment makes your product significantly better, but requires customers to make a big shift for a marginal pay-off you may find results to be very slow. Instead, make sure that the “improvement to change” ratio is very high for the customer.
What is the main obstacle preventing businesses from taking IoT projects from pilots to scale?
Similar to the above, I think that in many cases pilots are designed for what is possible and either do not test to understand what minimal features are required to achieve market demand that will drive scale. As a result, the costs for scaling do not add-up relative to the potential market size. There needs to be a lot of testing (of features by customer segment and geography) before piloting anything in order to have a product that makes sense to shift form pilot to scale.
How do you see AI and 5G technologies advancing IoT?
Both AI and 5G will accelerate innovation and “what’s possible” in IoT. The key will be mapping that to a need that consumers really care about to ensure that adoption keeps pace with technological advancement.
What are you most excited to learn / take away from the IoTC NEXT Summit?
I know that I am going to be inspired by all of the new ideas coming to market. I am also excited to hear from those who have not had consistent success to hear what they have learned.