EarlyBirds, has developed an open innovation ecosystem platform with services  where early adopters, innovators, and subject matter experts (SMEs) can come together to find ways to accelerate technology advancement and adoption in an organisation, wants to highlight how they can help make sense of the Internet of Things (IoT) for businesses. According to a TechTarget article, IoT is becoming increasingly popular for businesses because of the insights that it can offer but it does come with its particular risks and challenges. Meanwhile, businesses interested in building their competitive edge through the adoption of emerging and disruptive technologies like IoT can take part in the EarlyBirds system as early adopters. More about this can be gleaned from https://earlybirds.io/en/early_adopter.

According to the IoT Business News, IoT includes machine-to-machine (M2M) communication technology and is a network made up of interconnected “smart devices” with sensors, microchips, and wireless communication capabilities. It has disruptive potential because the identification, sensory, networking, computing, communication, and other information-based technologies that support IoT are applicable to practically every business, service, or commerce. This means that the existing instruments and technologies can easily be linked to the Internet to interact with external data and to respond to certain pre-programmed commands. And it allows everyone to interact and interface more with various things throughout the world resulting into drastic and revolutionary changes in development, economic growth, climate change, social well-being, energy and resource management, and environmental protection and preservation.

IoT has the potential to reduce operating costs, improve workplace safety, boost productivity, allow for better business insights, and enable better customer experiences. On the other hand, there are potential disadvantages, such as with security and privacy, connectivity and power dependence, technical complexity, integration issues, and the high cost of IoT devices, installation, configuration, and more.

Meanwhile, a Forbes magazine article expects IoT to grow exponentially because 5G technology is coming in. There are three potential routes for growth. First is that as speeds significantly improve, an enhance mobile broadband is made possible. Second, this will result into tremendous M2M communication that enables better data sharing between machines and improved IoT sensor functioning. Third, the ultra-low latency will be vital for precision mining, robotic surgeries, and other dangerous applications. Innovators, which are startup, scaleup or mature organisations, are the ones developing IoT products and solutions that businesses can use. By joining the EarlyBirds open innovation ecosystem, innovators can find customers and partners much faster, which can contribute significantly to viability of their business. More information about this can be obtained by visiting https://earlybirds.io/en/innovator.

Businesses are realizing the need to consider the application of IoT in their particular organisation. Wherever an organisation is in their adoption of IoT technology, EarlyBirds can help them make sense of the various options available internationally and evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and the pros and cons of the IoT solutions being offered by innovators. EarlyBirds can be helpful at any stage of the IoT journey of the business, from business case development, solution design, proof of concepts, testing, and through to deployment. But working with EarlyBirds as early as possible in the journey will provide substantial advantages in business case development by becoming aware of what the industry has to offer at the present time, including what is emerging and where there may be some way to influence solution design of the capabilities being made available by the innovators.

The EarlyBirds open innovation ecosystem has two main elements, their award-winning platform with over 4.5 million Innovators with the ability to create dynamic Innovation Maps of a technical or business topic. The EarlyBirds Services include the Explorer program that was created to help accelerate the process of technological innovation for the organisation as a service. The Explorer program has various key features, including: a focus on specific types of innovations; quarterly and monthly innovation days; regular webinars to help stimulate innovation in the organisation; a platform enterprise license; and a nominated SME for the business. The other element is the Challenger program, which was designed for organisations that want to concentrate on one particular issue at a time and resolve these in weeks.

Those who would like to know more about the EarlyBirds and how they can help make sense of the IoT can visit the EarlyBirds website at earlybirds.io.