Jun 29
Exit

Will Brexit Put the Brakes on British Innovation?

By Internet of Things (IoT), Manufacturing 3 Comments

The UK to exit the EU: What are the Implications for Tech Companies?

Most analysts agree:  the economic consequences of the UK leaving the European Union will be bad, and, in all likelihood, the long-term political implications will be even more dire. For British technology firms the prognosis is no better. Leaving the EU means shortage of skills and limited ability to employ non-UK workers, new trade regulations and tariffs, and uncertainties concerning EU’s data protection directives.

In the chaos of the Brexit we’ve nearly forgotten that one of the primary initiatives of the EU was to catalyze long term economic growth through higher levels of collaboration and deliberate investments in innovation. The EU supports several interlinked programs that provide member states €120 billion over the period 2014 – 2020 for research, development and innovation. The largest program is Horizon 2020 with a budget of just over €70 billion.

After Brexit, UK firms will no longer have easy access to EU research grants. Some are quick to dismiss these grants as they represent only a small fraction of the UK’s technology R&D budget, and point out that the UK is actually a net contributor to the EU budget. Between 2007 and 2013, the UK contributed €77.7 billion to the EU, which amounted to 10.5% of the total EU income from member states, and received €47.5 billion in EU funding (6% of the total).

But they may be missing the point.
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May 10
King Alphonso Jean-Michel-Basquiat

Virtual Reality—Content is King

By Augmented / Virtual Reality 4 Comments

We continue to be dazzled by eye catching virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies such as Facebook Oculus, HTC Vive and Microsoft HoloLens. And we conveniently forget that these viewers are essentially just that — viewing contraptions; they have no intrinsic value without the appropriate content. They come to life, if you pardon the choice of idiom, only when they have content to display, virtual worlds to visit, business value to deliver. Think of the role of virtual reality content in Inception, in which Ariadne, an architect, is brought in to design three dream “layers” with paradoxically intertwined architectures and maze-like layouts. This design does not simply provide the visual backdrop—it becomes the plot.

(If you need a refresher on AR/VR display technologies, now may be a good time to pause reading this article and visit “A Gaggles of Goggles” in an excellent article on AR in Wired Magazine.)

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Apr 11
Saint El Camino: Our Lady of Internal Combustion (David Stephens, 2013)

Buying a New Car – Millennials Do It Differently

By Automotive 5 Comments

A few years ago I was consulting one of Detroit’s automakers on developing what the company dubbed “a new digital strategy”. Management summarized its point of view on the topic by saying “we need to upgrade the IT infrastructure and increase the storage quota because millennials need more space for email”.

That was a while ago. Now even that management team knows that, in fact, millennials don’t use email all that much and prefer the directness and immediacy of instant messaging and social media channels. But the point behind this short anecdote is still extremely important: demographic shifts are having a profound impact on many aspects of all businesses and require a deeper understanding and considerations that go deeper than merely allowing more storage space for emails. Read More

Mar 18
Metamorphosis of Narcissus (Salvador Dali, 1937)

Digital Transformation and the Internet of Things

By Internet of Things (IoT), IT Strategy, PLM No Comments

The Internet of Things Enables Digital Transformation

I recently returned from a trip to Munich, Germany where I spoke at the Product Innovation Congress. In additional to the usual product innovation, PDM and PLM topics, this year’s Congress highlighted technologies, business strategies and use cases that use the Internet of Things (IoT) as a means to create a digital thread of product information to support product creation and service strategies.

As you might expect, a discussion on IoT and, in fact, any technology to drive enterprise digital transformation can generate a frustratingly wide range of definitions and, consequently, vague characterization of its benefits and economic justification.

During a panel discussion, I suggested that digital transformation isn’t simply a matter of establishing a new IoT-centric enterprise architecture. Rather, I maintain that we should look at the impact of the information and the digital thread enabled by the IoT in the context of organizational operations and decision making processes. Here is the approach I propose. You can use this to identify opportunities and assess potential value in a way akin to a maturity model. Read More

Mar 18

Connected Cars – Mid-Year Reality Check

By Automotive, Internet of Things (IoT) No Comments

In the beginning of this year I wrote an article in which I offered a brief assessment of connected and autonomous car technology, and the industry readiness to deploy them commercially. In the article, I suggested that although experimental self-driving cars are already cruising along California’s highways, it’s highly unlikely that self-driving cars will be roaming our streets for at least another 5 years. I expect that by 2020 we will see low speed self-driving cars or people-moving pods in limited-use applications such as company campuses, airport transfer services and retirement communities. Establishing dedicated paths and highway lanes for autonomous vehicles, as proposed, for example, in Germany, will accelerate the adoption and utilization of driverless cars.

Despite overly hyped headlines about artificial intelligence and machine learning software to navigate and control accident free vehicles, and, at the same time, actual impressive accomplishments of self-driving cars from Delphi, Waymo (Google) and others, the issue isn’t entirely a matter of algorithmic wizardry and technology maturity.

As we are getting ready to hand over some driving responsibility to our cars and learn to rely on advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) technologies, new questions and concerns arise about the ability of automakers to equip vehicle control systems with the ability to make ethical decisions, and the willingness of society to accept the outcomes of such decisions.

The TU-Automotive Detroit 2016 event in June will be a great mid-year opportunity to assess the state of connected car technologies (and consumers’ appetite to adopt them).  Expect to hear a mix of breathless statements about robotic cars, realistic assessments of technology and regulatory work in the works, and new mobility and transportation business models threatening to disrupt a century old status quo. And all of these will be shadowed by growing concerns about communication security and data privacy, and equally hyped car hacking stories.

See you in Detroit in June!