Value = IoT + Big Data

Not so long ago every Internet of Things event started with a discussion along the line of: “What is IoT?”; now that most of us are in agreement that IoT is the silicon that get the data from the sensor to the internet this discussion has stopped and everyone is working on IoT chips. Competition will be very high and differentiation will be in the niche areas.

So who will make the money? As usual the money will be made by early entrants and those that add value, significant value. If you create a device that measures and stores your blood pressure, you will have interest. Create a device that saves your life by informing you in enough time before you have a heart attack to be able to avert the heart attack – you have a market that is price elastic! And this is where Big Data comes in. Leverage the data in the cloud to create life saving or enhancing applications and you have your golden goose!

Quite simply:

Value = IoT + Big Data

Without IoT your data is stale, without Big Data you are unlikely to have a sufficiently big problem to solve. The first big introduction of this methodology was Location – first came GPS but then as smart phones combined information from the internet with location, GPS came out of the specialist market and the consumer boom took off. The energy market is ripe for picking, will Google bring it together or is there space for a startup?