Standards are Stupid: Why You Should Stop Waiting, and Just Ship Something (Internet of Things & WSN Europe 2014)

Mr Jordan Husney, Strategy Director

Undercurrent

United States

Apr 02, 2014.

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Berlin 2014 Presentation - Undercurrent^*

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The market isn't slow, you are - the number of devices being attached to the internet is increasing

sharply: from 80 things per second last year to an expected 100 things per second this year. Early

movers like NEST are being consolidated, while there are hundreds of new entrants into the

marketplace. Despite the lack of horizontal "grand unification" standards there are successful

vertical platforms. In consumer home there are NEST, Withings, Belkin, Quirky, etc. - plus

many distinct offerings in commercial/industrial

● Interrogate the market by shipping - with sharp development cost decreases, it's never been

easier to engage in ever smarter, ever more emergent business models. Certainly, greater values

will be unlocked by standards and ubiquitous interoperability, but there is plenty of value to unlock

in bringing greater efficiency or greater utility to your customers now. Most importantly, it's

about building organizational muscle to be able to address the market as it continues to heat up

(connected devices are not going away!) - and not wait to play a game of catch up. The only fatal

mistake is inaction

● How to start - build a lean product practice, emphasize doing over debating. Test, learn, iterate,

and scale. Build remote upgrade-ability into products and create simple platform APIs to

encourage unexpected combinations and partnerships. Use success to inform standards, not the

other way around.

Jordan Husney is Strategy Director at Undercurrent, an organizational transformation firm and digital

think tank in lower Manhattan. Jordan helps advise global businesses and complex organizations on the

future, helps them chart a path to meet it, and build muscles to get better every day. Since joining

Undercurrent, Jordan has advised the senior most teams at General Electric, American Express, PepsiCo,

and others.

Before joining Undercurrent, Jordan was a product manager and technologist. He managed a pioneering

internet service for managing millions of connected devices and their data. His product and consulting

practice is grounded in 17 years of computer engineering experience. He's developed hardware and

software to create everything from automated commercial kitchens to an illuminated interactive art

installation for the Olympic games which spanned the North of England. He is an active hacker, maker,

writer, and speaker

For almost seven years, Undercurrent has helped influential organizations transform in service

of an ever better future. Our consulting practice promotes change through active development

of responsive operating systems inside of our clients' organizations. Our ventures practice

believes that startups and end-ups have much to teach each other, and helps to play a part in

that transfer. We are an island of misfit toys - comprised of theorists, technologists, reformed

corporate jockeys, ethnographers, hackers and planners.