Connected devices are pushing the frontier of digital transformations, and spawning new business models.  This was a major theme at the recent Tech Expo in Santa Clara recently, and forms part of ArcInsight Partners’ research universe.

Identifying the right value proposition of new connected products ensures that product development funds are channeled the right way in focusing efforts on delivering the right customer benefit – the difference between a successful product and a dud.

June 05, 2023:  The US Securities & Exchange Commission is expected to finalize new rules on cybersecurity risk management which demand that C-suites and boards demonstrate a strategic approach to managing cyber risk. The rules will require every publicly traded company to file disclosures with descriptions of their security strategy, governance, and risk management. Companies will need to explain to shareholders how they assess cyber risk, describe their security policies, rapidly report material cyber incidents and demonstrate a significant level of board oversight on cybersecurity issues.

May 23, 2023:  The U.S. CISA issued a joint advisory with its Five Eyes partner agencies in the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand warning “a recently discovered cluster of activity state-sponsored cyber actor, also known as Volt Typhoon. The activity affected networks across U.S. critical infrastructure sectors including in the U.S. territory of Guam, home to home to three American military bases. The likely aim of the operation is to disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises, according to Microsoft.

The timing of the AWE event (whether coincidental or intentional) was interesting as well. Meta launched its Quest 3 mixed reality “metaverse” headset that very week. Apple released the new Vision Pro XR headset with great fanfare at its annual developer conference.

AWE 2023 made a sincere effort to bring in a less appreciated but vastly impactful category of XR players who serve enterprises and solve real problems of industry.

As an industry analyst studying the space of emerging industrial technologies and use-cases, ArcInsight Research took the opportunity to interact with an interesting cohort ranging from companies targeting problems on the industrial shop floor, the design labs and applications. They help customers manage error free product quality, the process of taking products from concept to reality, leverage earth observation imagery captured by Low orbit satellites now enabled through a synchronization with AR tools for better visualization of cityscape, vegetation and climate data and faster interpretation using AI capabilities with solving earth’s big problems such as climate change, feeding the growing humanity on this planet, even predict and warn against risks such as rising sea levels and animal extinction.

Traditional perpetual software licenses with add-on implementation & consulting services, and the periodic upgrade fees every couple of years was the dominant revenue stream for industrial software companies. Each piece of software sold supported a specific operation often on standalone basis – process monitoring, plant design, production planning, manufacturing execution, product/process simulation, supply chain and many others. Each tied to a certain set of operational business processes and all associated data residing in its own demarcated world.   The model worked great for the past several decades generating reasonable profit margins and cash flows for such companies.

New developments in the business environment are driving them to pivot to a new business model supported by an new packaging, pricing, and a new go-to-market and execution strategy – Subscription-based business. The new model promises to open up new growth and profit opportunities for industrial software. They also throw up significant execution challenges for businesses new to the model. Not navigated correctly this risks causing financial dislocations for the company.  The paper draws on research into software companies,  other sectors (gaming, streaming media, fintech and others) and ArcInsight Research’s own advisory work with clients. We will highlight insights gained from companies that successfully navigated this transition and made it successfully to the other side, and the challenges they managed to overcome.

ArcInsight Research has designed a questionnaire to better understand how industrial software leaders are managing the transition path to a Subscription-Business model. We invite you to take 5-10 minutes of your time and complete.                             GO TO SURVEY

THE GROUND REALITY OF INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONS

Digital Transformations in their fundamental form aim to reduce a reliance on people, maximize the use of digital tools and algorithms to support better decision quality and reconfigure the enterprise to support a new business future state that represents a discontinuity from its past past trajectory.  A more tangible message to shareholders talks about transformation initiatives being launched with the dual promise of reducing structural costs, and supercharging growth.

The auto and other industries have been brought to their knees by the scarcity of a tiny, and normally ubiquitous, piece of technology: the semiconductor. Plans for millions of cars have been cancelled and the damage will continue for years to come. How can business leaders prevent this from ever happening again? They need to transform their business by putting suppliers at the center.

Currently, CEOs typically spend a tiny fraction of their time with suppliers. Instead, they need to follow the procurement-centric model of Apple and other Big Tech companies by re-engineering and re-balancing the way they collaborate with direct and indirect suppliers, specifically: initiating one-on-one conversations with supplier CEOs; working with suppliers to develop mutually profitable joint business opportunities; making commitments about loyalty during future semiconductor and other crises – in general taking procurement to a more strategic level. Tesla is an example of a company that has done this phenomenally well.One or two tactics won’t work; to ensure resilience and success, what’s needed is a systemic approach that puts procurement at the core.

Attacks On Industrial Infrastructure Are Rising At An Alarming Rate.

OT/ICS Cybersecurity Threats Remain An Underappreciated Risk Area.

Radiflow is a next-generation cybersecurity company focused entirely on protecting from and preempting attacks on industrial infrastructure. this emerging innovator based in Isreal takes an enterprise impact perspective with a view to prioritizing the most vital assets to secure first, before designing and implementing mitigation strategies.

We compared America’s present economic situation that America and the rest of world find themselves in to one in the grip of a multi-headed hydra, each head operating independently. Collectively they threaten to tip the entire world into recession, even if its for a short duration. We have identified a set of risk-drivers that we believe are acting in parallel paths to create a recessionary scenario.

Read here.

As an industry analyst sitting in the heart of Silicon Valley, I have been fortunate enough to sit through thousands of exciting demos and witnessed numerous product launches and life cycles of emerging technologies – some long and fruitful, some (sadly) very short. But then the game of emerging technologies game is all about product development challenges, market acceptance risk, timing accuracy and more frequently the uncertainty of market execution . Investors backing these early technology plays choose to place multiple bets on future outcomes, and even back multiple horses. Cashing out big time on the ones that panned out while moving on from a vast majority of the remaining duds in the portfolio that didn’t.

Author David Rose picks one such emerging capability with a lot of early promise. He has grouped many related and diverse concepts and technologies that have potential to work together delivering tremendous benefits for consumer as well as industry, under the broad capability he calls “SuperSight“.

An organization’s future success depends on their decision makers’ ability to anticipate changes and disruptions in the marketplace. But how do you get information about tomorrow today? How can your decisions today account for tomorrow’s uncertainty. Sensing the faint signals that provide a glimpse of our evolving future is never an easy task. Nor is it foolproof. An even trickier job is sorting out false background radiations masquerading as information, from the true signals.

Martin Schwirn, author of a new book “Small Data, Big Disruptions” works for Strategic Business Insights. SBI is the   former Business Intelligence division of SRI International that has worked with clients on opportunities and change  since 1958 to help identify and map new opportunities based on emerging technology and market insights. SBI focuses on seizing information opportunities that exist between the moment you sense early signs of emerging disruptions and when it becomes public knowledge to capitalize on. He introduces a brand of the futuring methodology, called Scanning.

Thermal power generation will remain the main source of electricity in China for years to come. The country remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels and accounts for nearly 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

As part of a grand plan, China has begun deploying across 70 power plants a new artificial intelligence based optimization and control system developed by a unit of its eCommerce giant JD.com that automatically adjusts a range of variables for thermal boilers in real time. The goal being to transform the plant’s power generation management systems to improve boilers’ efficiency and reduce coal costs and pollution.

Matthew Brennan’s new book “ATTENTION FACTORY  was a natural one to examine given our firm’s deep research interests in artificial intelligence driven applications markets.

Product-Market Fit may well be the hardest things to nail down for an early startup, and also one of the key steps paving the way to successful venture funding. ByteDance finally hit its stride with a clear platform strategy, an excellent founding team, and an intense focus and discipline that’s the hallmark of all mega-successful consumer internet platforms we see around us today.

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming’s genius was in recognizing very early the shift in the way information was distributed and consumed in the newly emerged mobile medium. He made the bold choice to move away from human-centered content selection and distribution, to a platform almost entirely enabled by artificial intelligence based on machine learning on user-generated big data. He was convinced about the big shift taking place from people searching for content to “content searching for people”.

The groundbreaking technology connects with a customer’s existing enterprise applications, systems and sensors providing front-line workers with all the data they need, in a single app.

HBR Press has a unique record of publishing seminal books written by Harvard Business School’s academics.
This one is in a line of three books books released roughly 20 years apart that have documented fundamental shifts in the way companies compete in their markets, deliver unprecedented value to their customers, and becoming phenomenally successful global companies. Marco Iansiti & Karim Lakhani document a fundamental shift in the way companies create value with “COMPETING IN THE AGE OF AI“.

What is a AI-driven Company?

How are these companies different from traditional global corporations we have seen operating so far?

How does AI-driven approach create new competitive advantage?

What happens when AI-driven companies confront traditional companies in the marketplace?

Gary Marcus & Ernest Davis’ REBOOTING AI takes a long meandering path to examine the historical and philosophical underpinnings of what we know as AI today, and gives the reader a deeper look at the major shortcomings. However, it chooses to touches upon conceptual ideas that may serve as a historical guide, as thumb-rules while fixing AI’s issues. It focuses on concept rather than practice, and stops short of providing very actionable ideas.
Kartik Hosanagar’s A HUMAN’S GUIDE TO MACHINE INTELLIGENCE on the other hand, does include one (of three) of its parts on the overall landscape of machine-based intelligence. However its primary focus is about examining AI’s many issues objectively, testing and debunking the many myths and perceptions surrounding them. It then proceeds to provide a very clear framework to think about AI’s issues and our actions aimed at regulating and minimizing the impact of its frequent demonstrations of infallibility.

“ Intelligent Cities Are Not Defined Entirely By Technology. They Are Foremost About People Who Live There And A Quality Of Life They Expect From The City. Beginning A Conversation About Intelligent Cities With Technology  Risks Taking Us Down A Path Of Unintended Outcomes. ”

In Order To Cope With The Coming Surge In Growth & Demand For Innovation, Intelligent Cities Must Necessarily Become Digital Cities At Their Core.

What Are The Dimensions Of An Intelligent Digital City?

In Order To Cope With The Coming Surge In Growth & Demand For Innovation, Intelligent Cities Must Necessarily Become Digital Cities At Their Core.

Technology provider Hexagon built a analytics solution that triggers predictive maintenance for utilities, using satellite monitoring combined with operational data it improved the effectiveness of inspections by 40% and improved capability to predict future problems.

The City of Stockholm’s Smart and Connected City initiative leveraged city planning tools from Digital-twins technology provider Bentley Systems,  and worked with Stockholmers to build integrated solutions in a number of areas such as low energy districts, integrated infrastructure and sustainable urban mobility.

Field service is a massive and growing opportunity, powered by companies that make machines and equipment we use every day.

Quite likely to become one of the most influential books on Artificial Intelligence in recent years.  Amy Webb, quantitative futurist and professor of business strategy at NYU Stern,  author of  The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity  covers a a broad analytical swath in her sometimes sympathetic, sometimes brutally honest assessment of America’s path towards AI innovation, sharply contrasting with its counterparts in China.  Based on analyses of patent filings, policy briefings, interviews and other sources. Webb sets sensationalism aside in favor of careful arguments, deep historical context, and a frightening degree of plausibility.

Following the VC money, Rebecca Fannin became one of the first American journalists to write about China’s entrepreneurial boom, reporting from Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.  Her book is a journalistic journey through the immense strides China’s technology sector has made in recent years, the underpinnings of that growth, the vaunted technology players that are now giving American technology players a run for their money.

As we work through the China developments shared by Rebecca Fannin, we have chosen to intersperse thoughts from another AI/Emerging Tech. expert, unabashed China-cheerleader and a former head of Microsoft’s AI business Dr.Kai-fu Lee, who published a book on very similar lines last year – AI Superpowers.

Silicon Valley came to represent the innovative power of capitalism freed from clutches of government. The reality of its past 40 years of evolution, however, is a vastly different tale of intense policy support, government funding, carefully crafted market personas and lobbying. Argues Margaret O’Mara author of   THE CODE: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.

“The Single Greatest Need In Business Today Isn’t Automation, Its Autonomous Insight. It Means Being Able To Leverage Vast Amounts Of Data – Behind The Scenes, Where Connected Devices And Machines Interpret What’s Happening And Why, And Then Act Accordingly, Autonomously”

The Digital Twin is used to create demonstrable business value along several axes. The twin models are continuously updated as the physical asset is operated.  At any moment the twin represents a faithful representation of the current state of the asset.  They are also scalable. Benefits are derived when hundreds or thousands of similar assets have their own digital twins. A twin tracking a single asset learns from similar assets. They are also adaptable, and can transfer learning to another part or asset class, or adapt to new scenarios or new factors.

ArcInsight Partners’ new report examines analytics innovations from three companies, bringing some field experiences solving domain-specific problems using IIoT analytics. Oil & Gas midstream refining and chemical process/batch manufacturing often throw the hardest multivariate problems for optimization of processes. Two are early technology companies with a track record combining domain specific models with AI to solve client process issues. The third, a business unit of a large global conglomerate. The three companies exemplify the use of deep-domain expertise with operating experiences in upstream & midstream of oil &, gas and downstream aromatics process and chemicals industries. One is based in Europe, the other in Asia, the third headquartered in the United States.

The “M2-R2 Test” For Industrial-IoT

Rethinking The Framework Of Doing Business

Looking For Value Opportunities In The Data Ecosystem

Exploding A Few Myths

Smart Cities Are About Data-Driven Insights;

Smart Cities Are About Delivering Unique Contextual Citizen-Facing Services;

Smart Services Do Not Exist In A Vacuum. They Depend On A Pre-Existing Infrastructure Linked to A History Of Goals-Driven Economic Investments.

Enterprises Must Transform Digitally To Face The Next Phase Of Their Competitive Lives.

Quite likely to become one of the most influential books on Artificial Intelligence in recent years.  Amy Webb, quantitative futurist and professor of business strategy at NYU Stern,  author of  The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity  covers a a broad analytical swath in her sometimes sympathetic, sometimes brutally honest assessment of America’s path towards AI innovation, sharply contrasting with its counterparts in China.  Based on analyses of patent filings, policy briefings, interviews and other sources. Webb sets sensationalism aside in favor of careful arguments, deep historical context, and a frightening degree of plausibility.

Following the VC money, Rebecca Fannin became one of the first American journalists to write about China’s entrepreneurial boom, reporting from Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.  Her book is a journalistic journey through the immense strides China’s technology sector has made in recent years, the underpinnings of that growth, the vaunted technology players that are now giving American technology players a run for their money.

As we work through the China developments shared by Rebecca Fannin, we have chosen to intersperse thoughts from another AI/Emerging Tech. expert, unabashed China-cheerleader and a former head of Microsoft’s AI business Dr.Kai-fu Lee, who published a book on very similar lines last year – AI Superpowers.

Silicon Valley came to represent the innovative power of capitalism freed from clutches of government. The reality of its past 40 years of evolution, however, is a vastly different tale of intense policy support, government funding, carefully crafted market personas and lobbying. Argues Margaret O’Mara author of   THE CODE: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.

Field service is a massive and growing opportunity, powered by companies that make machines and equipment we use every day.

ArcInsight Partners Profiles An Interesting Company That Has Developed An Artificial Intelligence Technique, Deployed On Several Field Industrial-IoT Installations.

Cisco’s Maciej Kranz & ArcInsight Partners’ Praas Chaudhuri Pick Out Best Practices That Make Industrial-IoT Intiatives Succeed In Large Enterprises.