The Internet of Things (IoT) is estimated to grow at an exponential rate in the coming years. In this chapter, we investigate 21 Swedish firms, all early adopters of the IoT, but in different contexts: product firms, service providers, and technology developers. Through the lens of technological frames, we show how initial expectations are tied to the generation and analysis of data, with potential to influence new work practices, create enhanced business offerings, and nurture strategic collaborations. We also point out the importance of finding a balance between privacy and security and showing transparency in the use of data. Specifically, we conclude that in order for firms to successfully implement IoT into organizational processes they have to 1) change their work practices accordingly; 2) make sure that they have access to all needed competencies, be they internal or external; and 3) create an environment of trust that will leverage privacy concerns.

IoTguiden kommer ur ett Vinnovaprojekt som har skapat kunskap kring övergången från produkt till tjänst med Sakernas Internet (eng. Internet of Things, IoT) genom att 1) studera befintliga framgångsrika IoT- satsningar hos ett antal svenska företag inom olika branscher och 2) göra en bredare omvärldsanalys och benchmarking. Därigenom har projektet synliggjort möjligheter med IoT och vilka strategier, värdeskapande och roller som återfinns hos företag inom IoT- ekosystemet.

Genom att studera IoT-satsningar vid ett 20-tal svenska företag inom olika branscher har projektet genererat resultat som är generellt applicerbara på alla företag som står inför en transformation baserat på de specifika möjligheter IoT skapar. Resultaten har sammanställts i en skrift, IoTguiden, som innehåller konkreta råd och praktiker. IoTguiden distribueras fritt, både digitalt och som trycksak. Projektet har letts av Umeå universitet med stor vana av liknande utredningsarbete och genom de andra projektaktörerna, Fältcom och Telia Company har god tillgång till fallföretag tryggats. Det här har gjorts för att visa på mångfald och potential för processförbättring, effektivisering och nytt värdeskapande, men också för att lyfta fram vad som är gemensamma nämnare för samtliga som satsar på IoT, oavsett branschtillhörighet. 

Are you ready for what’s coming? As senior managers look to connect products, processes, and services to the growing field of the Internet of Things (IoT), this is an important preliminary question. Leveraging the IoT for firm benefit involves revisiting certain ideas that may have gone unquestioned for a long time. In this article, we begin by reviewing the complexity of the IoT, the complexities of an increasingly interconnected environment, and the increasing need to develop partnerships in order to create innovative solutions. We then offer practical insights from a case in which three actors with reciprocal specialties cooperated to create an IoT solution in the form of a connected appliance. While a shared spirit of optimism prevailed throughout the endeavor, reaching the finish line meant jumping a few hurdles along the way. Finally, we describe a number of fundamental issues related to business models, partnership strategy, data ownership, and technology diffusion that every enterprise should address before diving headfirst into the Internet of Things.

This research compiles relevant experiences and knowledge about the Internet of Things (ioT) in a clear and concrete guide. It is primarily based on interviews conducted between 2015 and 2017 with firms operating in different industries. While all firms featured in this guide are based in Sweden, we believe that their actions and strategies carry relevevance far beyond the context of any one nation or market. Furthermore, most of the firms that are featured in this guide have a strong international presence, further strengthening their ability to illustrate strategies for creating value by using IoT.  

By highlighting best practices and showing how firms can apply IoT in dfferent ways while devel- oping new products, services, and business models we show the multiple ways in which IoT can be incorporated into organizational life. Our aim is to inspire firms to draw upon the experience of others and learn from the different cases and insights, starting a discussion on key strategic choices, so that they are better prepared when launching their own IoT venture. 

The Internet of Things (IoT) creates a myriad of new business opportunities that focus on collecting, transmitting, and analyzing product data. IoT collaborations bring together diverse firms with separate skill-sets that both produce and utilize digitized data to co-create value. While previous research has explored the technical implications of IoT in great detail, it has largely ignored the business implications of such endeavors. In this paper, we focus on the early stages of the emerging inter-organizational relationships that IoT enables and ask the question: How can the inter-organizational dynamics between disparate actors in an IoT ecosystem be perceived and understood? By conducting a qualitative case study and tracing four types of organizational boundaries: efficiency, power, competence and identity, we show how firm boundaries are emergent, dynamic, and constantly negotiated between firms. Allowing for and understanding this relational interplay is crucial in order for IoT ecosystems to thrive and grow.

This paper traces a firm’s transition from goods-dominant to service-dominant logic using a remote monitoring system. By adopting a service system perspective and tracing its main resources involved in value creation, we have examined the value propositions that are brought forth, and the roles the different resources play. We have shown how the introduction of a new technology in the form of an RMS has a potentially strong impact on the other three resources in the service system; organization, by grounding service processes in data collection and analysis; people, through changing trust relationships; and shared information, by becoming the system’s language, laws and measures. Thus, by paying specific attention to technology, we may also see and work with its potential.

The open innovation model embraces the purposive flow of internal and external ideas as a foundation for innovation and network formation. While the open innovation paradigm has been successfully applied in high-tech settings, there is a lack of research on adopters of open innovation in other settings. We describe a case study conducted in a process industry setting, focusing on the LKAB minerals group as it makes a transition from a closed to a more open innovation context by adopting remote diagnostics technology. This process has resulted in the creation of new value networks. By tracing the reasoning behind the organizational transformation and studying the technology used to carry it through, we seek to explore the preconditions for open innovation and provide insight into the role of IT in the process. Our findings show that adoption of the open innovation model is grounded in developing organizational environments that are conducive to innovation, including expertise in creating a culture for knowledge sharing, building a trustful environment, and a resourceful use of IT. 

Firmly placed in an industrial setting, this research explored the introduction of remote monitoring technology into three different organizational contexts. By following these organizations over time, starting with their intention to invest in remote monitoring systems (RMS), there was a unique opportunity to witness their processes and to gain an insight into the intricacies of information technology (IT) and organizational transformation. The main question that this research sought to answer was thus: How is IT implicated in the remote monitoring of industrial equipment?

Previous information systems research has been accused of not paying enough attention to the material, that is, of not being specific about technology. This research adopted a sociomaterial perspective, thus recognizing the constitutive entanglement of the material and the social, and thereby acknowledging their mutual dependency. However, in order to provide specific insights about the material, an analytical disentanglement was performed, by extending the concept of agency from a focus on “the what” to include “the how”. Change was thus studied by not only asking what the nature of change is and who or what causes change to occur, but by also tracing how change is enacted, thus capturing both material and social agency as well as tracing their entanglement.

This research employed a broad approach, designed to provide a profound and extensive account of the studied phenomenon. Consequently, the thesis explored value creation, sourcing routines, partnership formation and innovative practices all related to remote diagnostics design and use. In addition, the research was qualitative and used interpretive case studies as the main methodology.

A composite finding of this research is that an RMS, with its ability to collect, transmit, store, and analyze specific contextual information across time and space, provides opportunities for boundary-spanning activities manifested as the formation of interorganizational networks. Furthermore, by tracing the information capabilities of the IT, and by being specific about the material, it has been possible to explore how RMSs have the potential to influence both organizational form and content. Through the examination of RMSs within interorganizational networks and as a part of value creation practices, this research has also shown how the organizational form and content have the potential to influence RMSs; their design, use, and material affordances. This research also placed focus on the importance of trust and has shown that trust in technology is established through trust in people.