Companies today are on a journey from digitization 1.0 to digitization 2.0. This means advancing from simply overlaying digital functionality on existing offerings to learning the customer context via connected products and services and adapting them to meet customer needs.
We have seen an encouraging amount of schemes and devices aiming to make urban cycling a safer experience. Volvo Lifepaint is a highly reflective temporary spray aimed at making cyclists and their equipment more visible at night, while WeCycle lets cyclists track their journeys, pooling their data to create heat maps for city planners. Now, Byxee is a smart device which could help cyclists conquer the hazards created by irregular road surfaces, by scanning the road ahead and alerting them of upcoming dangers.
La société Omron, spécialiste des équipements de contrôle de production, notamment des capteurs, va se diversifier dans l'agriculture. Dans ce domaine, que l'industrie de l'électronique et de l'informatique surveillent de plus en plus, la société espère récolter 30 milliards de JPY d'ici 2020 (225 millions d'euros [1]).
It’s inevitable that the wearable technology we see now, with its various biometric sensors, will start to move from our wrists to different parts of our body. The sensors will start showing up in different parts of our clothing.
One research firm believes this change will happen before the end of the decade. A new report from Tractica says we consumers will be buying more than 10 million pieces of smart clothing yearly by 2020.
Disruption’ is usually viewed in the context of a paradigm being changed and is often accompanied by the sense that it couldn’t have been anticipated. Yet, ask almost anyone if they expect their business to be disrupted and the answer will be ‘Yes’.
This is backed up by PwC’s latest research. Of 1300 respondents in its 18th Annual Global CEO Survey, 62% expressed concern about the impact of disruption in their industry, with Australian business leaders even more likely to anticipate disruptive trends than their global counterparts.
Many smart-grid entrepreneurs have recognized that utilities could make better use of the reams of smart-meter data they produce every day. At the same time, entrepreneurs have learned that selling to utilities can be slow and frustrating.
But after a number of stalled efforts, it seems that a growing cadre of companies can claim success doing both: showing business benefits from analyzing energy data and convincing utilities to invest in new technology.
On Thursday, Sunnyvale-CA-based Bidgely will announce London Hydro plans to use its software for an energy portal the Ontario-based utility is developing for its customers. Texas utility TXU Energy last week said it will use Bidgely’s software to offer a similar service.
