Transcript 0:00 [gentle music] There's really three broad concerns that are really holding businesses back in their IoT adoption, and of course, you speak about these often on your program. 0:11 But the first is, of course, concerns over security and privacy, the second being investment needed in the digital infrastructure, and then the third being the sort of regulatory environment. 0:21 And what we saw, particularly obviously in the healthcare area, was that COVID-19 was really accelerating IoT adoption. 0:36 [upbeat music] Welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. As always, I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:50 My final guest today leads a team of analysts conducting bespoke research for corporate and international organizations as well as governments on their most pressing policy issues. 1:01 Some of his research projects include estimating the impact of an AI in the Middle East, forecasting global demand for cooling, and looking at how technology will transform higher education. 1:14 Please join me in welcoming Jonathan Birdwell, Regional Director for Public Policy in EMEA for The Economist Intelligence Unit. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Peggy. It's, uh, wonderful to be here. 1:28 So Jonathan, you and I both know IoT, I've been covering IoT longer than I want to admit at this point, is an interesting topic, and it's proving, I think, to be a necessity, I think, for any company. 1:40 So I guess what I wanna ask you, in your opinion, how does the report, you guys have just put out this really amazing report, differ from all of these others? 1:49 There's been so many reports out there, but why did you guys at The Economist right now, you know, The Economist Intelligence Unit, believe it was important to approach the IoT topic in the way that you guys have right now? 2:03 I'm kind of curious to your thoughts on that. Yeah, absolutely. Um, maybe just for your listeners, uh, just to, to say a little bit about The Economist Intelligence Unit. 2:12 So we are the research and consultancy business within The Economist Group, which is of course best known for publishing The Economist newspaper. 2:19 The core of our business is really country analysis and economic forecasting. However, we also do bespoke research programs, as you mentioned, on top policy and business issues. 2:29 And for this project, we partnered with China Telecom Europe to look into the transformative potential of IoT across six industries, including energy, healthcare, and logistics, and to produce a white paper on the topic. 2:42 And the main aim was really to produce something that was accessible and engaging for our typical Economist audience of business leaders and policymakers. 2:50 Now, this audience often do not have a background in technology, and we think this can act as a barrier to IoT uptake, so we really wanted to write a non-technical accessible report for that audience. 3:02 So do you think right now that when you talk about energy, healthcare, logistics, those types of businesses are ready to start thinking about the Internet of Things in their operations? Are they starting to get there? 3:16 Well, I think in short, yes, they're, they're starting to think about it, but I think what we saw was that, you know, a majority of the existing literature in IoT is relatively technical. 3:27 It's difficult for a business leader without a background in the subject to really understand the potential of the technology, and this was shown in numerous studies, but for example, in PwC's twenty nineteen study on manufacturing, one of the sectors, of course, where IoT could have the biggest impact. 3:43 What that study found was that over fifty percent of businesses surveyed had no plans to implement IoT technologies, but they're not sure why they should. 3:51 So even businesses who had taken initial steps really to implement IoT have found that they were adopting the technology more slowly than they had initially planned, and they were still sort of in the planning and early adoption stages. 4:04 Now, considering the benefits, of course, that IoT can bring, both in terms of business performance and also sustainability and energy efficiency, this is a worrying state of affairs. 4:14 So in order to increase adoption, existing IoT stakeholders really need to be able to communicate the potential of the technology in a way that is accessible for everyone. 4:24 Now, throughout this project, the team was constantly checking to ensure that the information we were producing was understandable for a non-technical audience, and I, I hope, I feel that this really comes through in the final report. 4:37 So we always talk about the people, the process, the technology. In order to really make IoT work, you just talked about some really big things that we've been talking about a lot is sustainability, energy efficiency. 4:50 You have to leverage the most important things that matter not only to what's happened in past generation but, but future generations. 4:57 You have to give back to mankind, and that's where IoT is having its greatest benefits. 5:03 Are you finding some recommendations or possible solutions to, like, a lot of these challenges that I think society overall is facing? Yes. 5:12 Uh, I think what we found in particular was obviously with COVID-19, we saw a lot of these... You know, that was really accelerating adoption of IoT. 5:21 And what we think is that, you know, a lot of the, the, that sort of progress is going to continue past the, the pandemic. Um, and, you know- So, well, let me, let me... I'm sorry, let me interrupt you. So it was... 5:33 And we believe that. It's a pandemic. It took a pandemic to open up the eyes of a lot of businesses. So I mean, w- what was m... 5:41 slow moving, and I hate to say this, COVID-19 pushed things forward a little bit more than maybe what would've happened before. 5:48 Is, is that some of what your research might have revealed?Yeah, that's, that's what it revealed. 5:53 And I think, you know, there's really three broad concerns that are really holding businesses back, uh, in their IoT adoption. And of course, you, you speak about these often on your program. 6:03 But the first is, of course, concerns over security and privacy, the second being investment needed in the digital infrastructure, and then the third being, you know, the sort of regulatory environment. 6:13 And what we saw, particularly obviously in the healthcare area, was that COVID-19 was really accelerating IoT adoption primarily for two things. Well, first, because you can use it to monitor things remotely. 6:29 Um, and secondly, because it can help businesses adapt their operations to a socially distant environment. 6:34 So on that first point, it's probably where we saw the most visible use cases, for example, remote monitoring of patients and tracking compliance with social distancing. 6:44 We saw, you know, Shanghai Public Health Center adopting those practices. 6:48 The ability to keep a safe distance while gaining the information needed for decision-making was, of course, vital to stopping the spread of the virus. 6:55 But actually, in the second area, which was less widely discussed, I think is where some of the more cutting-edge IoT applications have really been seen. 7:04 So for example, there's a startup in San Francisco called Bright Machines who are offering free use of their microfactories for twelve months for any medical company who are producing items related to COVID-19. 7:17 And what these microfactories do is attach IoT devices to existing machines, and then these sensors can collect data and identify and automate processes as the machine runs. 7:28 This, of course, limits the cost and disruption associated with the IoT adoption, but also crucially allows workers to operate machines remotely. 7:36 And it can also help manufacturers really scale production quickly, which of course has been crucial for producing enough ventilators and some of the other medical devices that were needed to treat the virus. 7:47 So let me ask you this honestly. You, you mentioned some things about healthcare and, and, and digital infrastructure, all the regulatory. 7:55 Because of COVID-19, we saw things happen on a privacy standpoint, data analytics that we never would have seen before because we had to get ventilators out. Would those things have happened? 8:07 Because we don't even know how we're protecting people. So are some of those things that we were able to see, you just described, you know, manufacturers automating things faster, quicker than ever before. 8:20 Are we seeing that partnerships, the way we go to market, monitoring, we're not even sure if we are protecting people's data. 8:27 I mean, the HIPAA regulations here in, in the United States, I, I don't want to say that are being violated, but we don't really know a hundred percent some of the things we might have, have been violated. I, I don't... 8:38 I'm not quite sure I'm putting them right into the right words, but we had to do things faster we never would have allowed before because we had to save people's lives. Absolutely. 8:48 And I think, you know, we really need to dig into how that acceleration has impacted on that and what sort of data now, uh, vendors have, because IoT is really going to be a central battleground, battleground over data ownership. 9:02 You know, who owns the data? Is it the consumer or the data collector? So I think- So- Addressing that... Uh, sorry, go ahead. 9:09 So, so I was gonna say, so then in looking at that, for what happened with the pandemic, the IoT is really proving to be this really great tool for what's happened during the pandemic, but I think it's going to be something even after the pandemic. 9:23 I have to say the new normal, I hate that expression, but what's going to be happening for companies after we start going back to work and finding out how we can leverage to do things better, faster with like what manufacturers are doing to automate things and learning from that? 9:38 Absolutely. 9:39 I mean, our, our belief based on the research is that a lot of the applications implemented during COVID-19 are really here to stay because their benefits for businesses also extend in meeting challenges that existed before the pandemic and we're likely to face in, as you say, this new normal, whatever that looks like. 9:55 So for example, take remote monitoring of patients. Even before the pandemic, healthcare systems were of course struggling with increased demand from aging populations. 10:04 Now, the type of sensors that we've seen used in the pandemic can also allow patients to be monitored from the comfort of their own homes, potentially reducing pressure on hospital beds, but also importantly, improving quality of life for people who are then able to stay in their own communities while they're receiving care. 10:21 I think similarly for retail and manufacturing. 10:24 Pre-pandemic, many omni-channel retail platforms, you know, were struggling to deal with surges in demand around, for example, key shopping dates, Black Friday, Cyber Monday. 10:35 Now, IoT-enabled automation brought in to help with peaks in demand, of course, driven by the lockdown, can be redeployed to help retailers now adapt to the modern consumer landscape, and in particular, those moments of high surge demand. 10:50 We've had some slowdown because of what's been happening globally in the world right now. What do we think is gonna be happening going forward? I mean, do you have some predictions now? 11:01 I-- We've had to kind of change things. We're trying to get back. We's trying to, to ramp up again. 11:06 Do you have some predictions from the research that says, "Here's what we see the future post the pandemic world" kind of thing? Do you have some estimates on where, where you see things going? 11:16 Well, I think one thing that's interesting to think about is one of the challenges around sort of investment in the digital infrastructure. You know, and this is a real challenge for businesses. 11:27 You know, one study by Microsoft, uh, Azure found that a third of businesses that adopted IoT felt that they did not have the resources or workforce to really scale their IoT project to its full realization. 11:39 Um, and so I think what we might... 11:41 This re- this requires both investment in systems upgrades, so upgrades to four G network, uh, the build-out of five G networks, which I think, you know, is only going to accelerate, particularly, uh, post-COVID. 11:53 But also, I think COVID has highlighted the need for addressing, uh, the sort of less discussed challenge around soft infrastructure. 12:01 So things like shared standards, interoperability protocols that can help to foster market coordination. 12:09 Um, and so I, I do think we'll start to see progress on those areas, which will hopefully lo- lower the barriers for investment in some of this digital infrastructure and enable businesses to be able to accelerate their IoT adoption. 12:23 I have to tell you, Jonathan Birdwell, regional director for public policy in EMEA at The Economist Intelligence Unit, I love this conversation. Where can our listeners go to get this report? 12:34 So the report will be out, um, in the end of June, the last week of June, and, uh, they can go to the EIU website, eiu.com, and, uh, they'll be able to download the report there. All right. Jonathan, thank you so much. 12:48 Okay, listeners- Thank you so much... we are out of time for today. Remember, we are broadcast live every Tuesday at twelve PM Central. 12:54 Check out our website at connectedworld.com or The Peggy Smedley Show website, peggysmedleyshow.com. As always, tweet at us at connectedwmag. All right. 13:03 This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. Have an awesome week. [upbeat music]
