To Commercialize IoT, Embrace the Venture Structure | IoT For All
The technology that enables IoT has improved by leaps and bounds over the past 15 years. The commercialization methods, by contrast, haven’t changed much. Here’s a good start: Structure your IoT initiative as an entrepreneurial venture. This allows you to experiment, tweak and pivot until you reach product-market fit.
As more “things” get connected to the Internet, more use cases become possible. But not every use case has a corresponding revenue model. Just because I can put your pet-cam on the Internet doesn’t mean I can get paid for it.
“Sometimes we must work particularly hard to find the architecture of the revenues. This struggle is as valuable as inventing the technology itself.”
The first step to winning that struggle is to set the IoT project up as a venture. My first IoT platform was created in 2000, when I was CEO of a startup venture named Brivo Systems. I’ve worked on more than a dozen IoT solutions since then, mostly within large enterprises. The technical components have improved dramatically over the past 15+ years, e.g., the Cloud, service-oriented architecture, and modular software – not to mention cheap sensors.