Social:Economy of Things

The Economy of Things (EoT) represents the integration of physical objects into economic activities through the Internet of Things (IoT). While this integration offers economic opportunities across industries, the adaptability and transformation can be more challenging for some sectors than others.

History

The Economy of Things (EoT) emerges when the Internet of Things (IoT) generates new value. Essentially, tangible assets in the physical realm are converted into digital entities, enabling their participation in emerging digital markets.

A practical illustration of the Economy of Things (EoT) is Vodafone's introduction of a dedicated platform. On this platform, entities such as robots, cars, and other objects are enabled to exchange goods and services autonomously. The EoT not only facilitates data sharing across various ecosystems but also paves the way for novel revenue streams.

The Economy of Things (EoT) describes a system wherein interconnected devices have the capability to autonomously trade and transact. This framework permits individual IoT devices to possess distinct identities, allowing them to execute transactions on their own. Such a level of integration has the potential to reshape and extend the conventional parameters of an established IoT ecosystem.

For the shift from the Internet of Things (IoT) to the Economy of Things (EoT) to occur, a specific platform is developed. This platform champions open participation, facilitating collaborative efforts among partners from diverse sectors. Its architectural design is pivotal in actualizing the EoT concept, as it mediates data products, services, and related IoT data throughout the platform's infrastructure.

Characteristics

For EoT to be truly effective, working the ecosystem is imperative. To this end, there are five key characteristics that a platform must have to achieve overall value in the ecosystem:

Trust

Interactions and transactions must be able to be tracked, authenticated, and verified to ensure that customers and businesses can trust that data shares are in line with customer preferences. Blockchain technology represents one way this trust can be built: each transaction can be stored in connected blocks to provide an immutable timeline, allowing all transactions to be tracked by platform customers.

Regulation

A system of platform governance is needed to ensure that data is correct and ethically sourced. The role of industry bodies is vital to ensure that data sharing and interactions between ecosystem players are compatible.

Security

The platform should have a reliable network security infrastructure to allow partners to voluntarily share the data generated by their IoT devices, with the assurance that unauthorized parties cannot gain access.

Open and scalable

The platform should focus on cooperation and creating an open, accessible and cooperative ecosystem to encourage more participants to get involved. To energize the platform it is important that strong relationships are established with potential customer groups and ecosystem participants.

Autonomous transactions

Many transactions on an EoT platform will have low monetary value, so to support these microtransactions cost-effectively, it is important that the platform be highly autonomous.

Applications

Personal computers and mobile devices have facilitated the development of markets for digital goods such as music, movies, news and stocks. However, the reliance on data and activity in the physical world limits the influence of this digital revolution in connecting the digital and physical worlds. This is where the Internet of Things (IoT) comes into play.

The term Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a set of physical objects that are embedded with sensors and actuators, which connect to computer systems via wired or wireless networks, enabling digital monitoring and even control of the real world.

IoT uses various technologies to connect the physical and digital domains. Objects have built-in sensors that can monitor changes in temperature, movement, or virtually any feature of the environment. These sensors send signals to devices, which respond to the changes by taking appropriate action. To monitor or control the actions of connected machines and objects, sensors and actuators connect to computer systems via wired networks such as Ethernet or wireless networks such as WiFi.

Due to the inability of the data generated to be shared across many systems and devices, the value of Internet of Things (IoT) data is not yet commercially viable. The Economy of Things (EoT) will make it possible to commercialize the data produced by a network of connected devices that can interact, communicate, trade, and transact across multiple environments and systems. In the next five years, according to STL Partners, the EoT will reach a tipping point. By 2030, it is estimated that there will be about 3.3 billion EoT-enabled devices worldwide, representing more than 10% of the global IoT market.

Platform

To develop a platform for the Economy of Things, there are some considerations to take into account.

Build trust

The progressive use of cloud-native development and cutting-edge technologies requires security from its inception for enterprises. The telecommunications industry has a strong network security infrastructure that can be extended to a platform in the Economy of Things. It is imperative to protect data as it moves from devices to data centers. Decentralized digital identities (DIDs) and consent management are effective in resolving data ownership issues and ensuring that data is shared with permission. DIDs and their credentials can be validated and maintained on the blockchain, where they are encrypted with confidence.

Providing data for business

A proper governance framework is needed to help ensure that data is accurate, current, compatible, and ethically sourced-in other words, business-ready-to be valuable to the ecosystem.

Promote membership

To motivate organizations to participate in a marketplace platform and share their data, the platform must transparently showcase its value creation mechanism and the ensuing benefits. An effective approach to garner initial support is by establishing a minimum viable ecosystem (MVE). Within this ecosystem, every participant can clearly perceive tangible benefits and value generation tailored to their enterprise.

See also

• Internet of things