iot buyers
Best Practices, FAQs, go-to-market, Internet of Things, sales, Strategy

Selling IoT – Who Is Your Real Buyer?

You found product-market fit and built your Internet of Things (IoT) solution. But do you know who your buyer is?

IoT solutions create value that cut across organizational boundaries. Identifying a single buyer or owner in today’s traditionally structured organizations is difficult. Unlike IT where there is a centralized buyer, IoT buying is decentralized.

This post describes the reasons for this, and provides six best practices for selling IoT solutions into corporate organizations.

Buying IoT from startups
Best Practices, Internet of Things, Strategy

Buy smart: best practices for sourcing IoT solutions from start-ups

A lot of the innovation around Internet of Things (IoT) is coming from start-up companies. But how do you buy a solution when the technology is still evolving, the use cases are emerging, and the company selling it may not be in business a year from now? Your “tried and true” sourcing practices that you use with your more established suppliers will actually increase the risks for both you and the start-up company that you are buying from.

This post describes the three main risks and highlights ten new strategies for buying IoT solutions for start-up companies.

Digital Transformation, Internet of Things, IoT, Strategy

Five things managers should do first in an emerging IoT market

There is no lack of IoT platforms, business models, and innovative products in the market today. However, today’s products are still immature point solutions. From technology standards, to business models, IoT will evolve over the next few years.

Given the immature state of IoT, what should transformation, business and IT managers do today?

This article discusses five things that managers should do now as they plan and deploy IoT strategies and projects.

5 types of innovation
FAQs, Innovation Management, Strategy

Innovation is not just about technology – the five types of innovation all managers must know

Recently, I met with key executives from an industry trade group to discuss disruptive innovation in Silicon Valley.

One key concept I shared with them is that although many people equate innovation with technology, there are actually five types of innovation and that some or all may occur at the same time.

This post describes the five types of innovation, and provides managers with three takeaways to guide their innovation strategy.

FAQs, Innovation Management, Internet of Things, IoT

Innovation of Things, not the Internet of Things will drive real innovation and transformation

Are you ready? The Internet of Things (IoT) is here and its ability to drive new innovation will be huge.

But how much is real and how much is hype? Today’s IoT are “point” solutions that don’t live up to the hype. They offer limited utility and solve a small set of problems.

This articles discusses what IoT will look like when it lives up to the hype. It provides fives takeaways for managers to do today to begin the transformation from Internet of Things to Innovation of Things.