The Industrial Internet of Things has generated plenty of technology-related discussions. Now it’s generating real world and, sometimes unusual, business partnerships and collaborations.
It’s much easier to look back over the long history of political, societal, economic or technological developments and connect the dots to analyze how a particular trend developed. It’s more difficult to do that in real time as the trend is developing. But that’s where we find ourselves today trying to decipher the progress of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). One aspect of the trend, however, is becoming very clear—to lead you have to partner.
This reality seems to be growing out of the speed at which the IIoT is being accepted and implemented.
During his presentation at the Industrial Internet Consortium’s (IIC) second annual IoT Solutions World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Spain, Mark Hutchinson, president and CEO of GE Europe, explained that the recent transformation of GE from an industrial company to a digital industrial company stemmed from a great deal of executive concern about “who would eat our lunch.” Noting that companies need to be concerned about who will own the digital space between them and their customers, Hutchinson said, “If it’s not you, you become a commodity and can be disintermediated. But your knowledge of your business puts you in the best space to understand this and take advantage of it.”
The catch is that companies don't have a lot of time to get up to speed on this. “When Jack Welch brought Six Sigma to GE, he had people in training for five years,” said Hutchinson. “With the IIoT, you don’t have that much time. So we started hiring more people from outside technology companies, like Google,” and are encouraging everyone inside GE to catch up.
Outlining his four keys to getting an effective start with IIoT, Hutchinson said: