Episode 34: The Living Dead: IoT Zombies

Andrew: So Aaron, Jen. Thank you both so much for joining me today. I’m so excited to talk to you about something kind of spooky. Yeah, it’s a spooky topic. Most people think of IoT, they think spooky, right? Aaron, you managed OST’s IoT practice?

Aaron Kamphuis: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely yeah. I’ve been at OST for over 10 years now. Time flies fast and yeah, I manage our Connected Products practice at OST and it’s been great, we’ve done some really interesting things.

Andrew: So Aaron used the term connected products. What’s the difference between connected products and IoT?

Aaron: You know from our perspective IoT is a technology methodology, if you would. An industry concept and you know. You might be pedantic a little bit for us to say well, what we do is connected products. And use IoT. You know, for us we help customers take a durable good, connect it in some way. Usually it’s in the smart home phase, the market or in the commercial market. So we do both, but typically we’re focused on products that are sold directly either to companies built by a company to be sold to another company or in home individual. So truly a product.

Andrew: Excellent, that makes good sense to me. Got it. Let’s get Jen Nowlin into the conversation. Jen is also here with us. Jen partners with you and your team in the connected product space. He said with a question mark in his voice.

Jen Nowlin: So yes, my name is Jen Nowlin. I’m principal consultant focused in IoT. As one of our sales people have termed, I’ve been doing IoT since before it was a thing. Been in this for over 20 years. Connecting people, places and things.

Andrew: Twenty years, that’s amazing. I think you’re right. I think most people would say 20 years has IoT even been around for 20 years. It has.

Jen: It has is clearly it’s been around for longer than that. It’s been around in connected systems. You know, hardwired in through SCADA systems and other systems, and then what happened is cellular arrived in the early 2000s and really changed the dynamics of truly everything we do. Mobile connectivity across the board enabled people to be productive and interact with different places in different ways, and now things are a part of that whole experience.

Andrew: So this has been going on for more than 20 years. There’s a lot of hype around it today, right? What do you see happening today in the marketplace?

Jen: I’d say tech has gotten ahead of the competency of executing IoT today. Since it’s been going on for decades, yes, the technical side is fairly evolved right now. You can do low cost sensors embedded into connected products, as Aaron articulated earlier. You can connect those products through different wireless architectures back into platforms and you know, ingest that data into the cloud. That same type of methodology has been done for decades. I’d say what is massively different right now is the evolution expectations of those users. What was more, just functional, ‘Hey command control? Does this work? Is it on off now?’ Now, we’ve enabled a whole different set of expectations and interdependencies with other systems with other capabilities in a particular space, like the home like the health care centers, and you know, even outside in the general environment.

I am excited about a lot of Anna’s ideas going forward for events, social media and more. I would like to see her take ownership of some of the new possibilities we discussed this week, such as contest marketing, sharing social content from our inner circle clients, and more.: Wow. So lots and lots of activity, continuing to refine and evolve.

Jen: Every day. We just keep moving faster and faster. Yeah, Aaron and I are getting busier and busier.

Aaron: Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you really look at this growth and hype around IoT, you really started seeing that in early 2, 2010, 2013 in that range, right? And the capabilities that the thing we have with the you know the pervasiveness of the Internet, the availability of cheap edge computing, the ability to do implementations at a global scale using cloud approaches really all came together at a wonderful Nexus right where IoT became a massive thing that we were talking about in our industry five, seven, ten years ago. You know, and now the dust is really starting to settle, is what I would say and it’s having the capability to do it is in some ways outstripping the cultural implications, both in the home and in the commercial space.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah, I get what you’re saying Aaron, that that that makes me think more and more IoT connected products projects, more and more work. That’s great for you and for Jen. More and more success? Are those projects going well? As things become cheaper and more cost effective for us to do, sometimes we don’t do them as well and I’m talking about we broadly not we OST, of course.

Aaron: Yeah, for sure, Jen, I think you had an interesting stat you used. I think I heard it yesterday that the number of IoT projects that are launched versus the number that are considered successful.

Jen: Yeah, it’s actually quite dismal. It says, I think just around 60 to 70 percent feel that their IoT initiative is actually not successful. So you have a small minority, around only about a third have confidence that they’ve done their IoT deployment and initiative and are reaping the values of it successfully. Most land in this abyss of what we’d call IoT kind of like purgatory.

Andrew: IoT graveyard maybe, since it’s spooky season. So two-thirds of IoT projects failed. Did I get that right or they’re unsuccessful? What happens to those projects? That’s an enormous investment, and what happens there?

Jen: Well, it depends. You have three different approaches. Some companies get wise quickly and they just kill them off say, ‘Oh no, we didn’t realize that in this exact time period that we’ve forecasted, just park it and kill it. So others do a slow and painful death. That just cause attrition over time you know these products are out there, but they don’t know that they’re dead. And they end up just roving around stealing and consuming resources. So other initiatives get buried and wrapped up in other IoT projects or you know one of our favorite ones is, you know, truly to become the living dead. So you have the start to grow into the zombie apocalypse, where this organization won’t give it up and they keep deploying these connected products that truthfully are not smart. They’re lifeless, consuming resources and energy and looking for intelligence that they don’t get.

Andrew: I love it. What a great frame of reference. Obviously those who know me know I’m obsessed with the robot apocalypse, but I love even more the idea of these little IoT zombies that are just roaming the earth, taking precious resources. You think there are a lot of these IoT zombies floating around?

Jen: Oh yeah, dealt with a number of companies that keep doing zombies every time because they don’t take their lessons learned and really invest back into what are we trying to achieve as far as relationship between both what the connected product in the field is doing and what we can do to take those insights coming out of the, you know, deployed products in the field, how people are interacting with them, take our own business intelligence and wrap that up in a way and return those insights with differentiated value and kind of have a cyclical loop. They kind of just launch it and forget about it and then go ahead, Aaron.

Aaron: Yeah, and I you know the way I would state is that this zombification can happen at any point in the life cycle of a connected product or connected products portfolio. I mean it could be never get out of the PoC phase, which is you’re constantly tinkering and you never get to commercialization, right? You don’t build enough inertia with a product, or you know, or it might happen right at launch, you know you’ve fully achieved all the design goals, the Engineered Design goals, and product goals of this this product and you push it out there and nobody cares. Because it’s not a compelling product, right? Or it can happen, you know, let’s say it’s a compelling product, but you didn’t build in enough organizational support for it in terms of the architecture of design to handle that scale. You didn’t put in the infrastructure organizational infrastructure to offer support to your end users or you didn’t spend enough time with your sales channel so they know how to be. Maybe you sell through dealers, right, and they they understand it and it’s a great product, but nobody knows about it, nobody’s here hearing about it’s not getting the exposure it needs so it never lives up to the promise. Or even let’s say you have a first generation very successful product and everybody, just you know, has the banner behind them, “Mission accomplished,” and there’s no more investment in it, you might have very simple interactions, people love, they’re delighted by it. It can do simple things like command and control and it makes a difference. But then it just like it’s the people aren’t companies not investing in it. They’re not learning from users. Competitors come in with a more compelling product, and it just fails to continue to thrive. So we see zombies all along the way, in their lifecycles.

Andrew: So what I hear you saying is one of the most compelling cases might be that we launched this thing and it was live initially and we were excited about it. And then it zombified over time. We didn’t stay on top of it. We weren’t constantly revising it, or refining it or responding to users’ needs. Is that what I’m hearing you saying?

Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. Because let’s say you’re a durable goods manufacturer and you’ve been building the same durable goods for the last 20 years and your design in product lifecycle is such that you launch and then you’re done and you move on to whatever your other thing is and it lives in the marketplace for 10 years. That care and feeding model, that financial model doesn’t apply to connected products. You now are fully engaged with your your users 24 by 7 and it’s that things are moving much faster so you have to think about how do you keep your product from becoming a zombie after it’s launched.

Andrew: Hold on a second. Let me ask you a clarifying question. Why is it a bad thing if I launched a product and it seemed initially good to the customer? Now I’ve got this zombie product that we don’t touch anymore, but people are presumably still using it right? Where’s the? Why do I gotta kill my zombies?

Jen: Because I say, when you launch a connected product, you’re opening up a conversation. You need to converse, so this is what Aaron talked about for product manufacturers in particular, they’ve never had to sustain a conversation with the consumer of their product.

Andrew: Oh yeah.

Jen: Right, so now when you have a connected product. The consumer wants to engage there, and they make that first, ‘Hey, how are you?’ Oh great, I’m engaged in the conversation. If you don’t respond to a conversation, eventually people stop talking to you. They walk away.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah, I hadn’t thought of it that way Jen, but I get it. The zombie products are continuing to sort of be semi autonomous and respond, but not in a meaningful way that actually engages the customer.

Jen: And they do a lot of groaning and wandering around.

Aaron: Yeah, and I would tell you that the market, the market and users expectations have changed, you know, in a non-connected world, you might have a durable good sitting in the room next to you doing whatever it does, and you might go up and touch it or whatever. And now there are competitors out there like Google like Apple, who have set this new standard that people have grown to expect. That things are continually delighting you in unexpected ways. Think about when you’ve gotten an update to your smartphone. And also it does something differently. And you’re like, of course it does. That’s the new expectation.

Andrew: Yeah, so if I’ve launched a product, I’ve managed to successfully launch my connected product. That’s a start, not an end. That’s what I hear you saying, right? That’s just the beginning of my journey, and if I abandoned if I abandoned my baby then I’m just creating another zombie.

Aaron: One hundred percent. You’re going to disappoint the people in your ecosystem best case scenario. Worst case scenario you’re going to create a situation where you’re going to leave some undiscovered value or new business model on the table. You know we’ve seen over and over again these first gen where they’re kind of meeting the obvious thing need as an enabler for these second-generation strategies where the real opportunity for a business lies to change the way they do business or engage with their customers in ways they’ve never been able to and that’s where the real money is at.

Andrew: So if I’m not worried about my zombies, I’m leaving opportunity on the table. I might not even be having the conversations I actually want to have, the conversations that could most benefit me.

Jen: You’re not building intelligence. I mean, that’s what a conversation does. It’s a trade of value back and forth where you gain insight. Oh, I’m going to share some knowledge with you. Oh, great. You know I’ve got this knowledge and you know the collective knowledge is powerful in how you can act and move in more, you know, dynamic ways that we just aren’t used to. BMW calls this with their intelligence embedded in their BMW Swarm intelligence, so they aggregate all of the insights from different BMW’s all around Europe and the US. And depending on that area they deliver different capabilities or features that keep the consumer engaged with different knowledge.

Andrew: Oh my gosh, that’s exciting, but that sounds so hard.

Jen: That’s why they’ve been strategically developing this with a structured vision and the continuous investment. Knowing this has to be ongoing for ten years or more.

Andrew: Wow, so then I have to ask, how does an organization prevent this sort of zombification? So we invested heavily. We’re going to launch a connected product now. We’ve got something in the marketplace. How do we keep it from becoming a zombie?

Aaron: So that’s a great question and and you know not to back it out, but it just you know Zombification can happen in all these different phases and what you need to be thinking about is probably different depending on what phase you’re in, but let’s focus specifically after launch, and there’s a couple things. One is you have to consider what the operational implications are both from the team needing to support these products as well as how it affects everything else that’s going on inside your ecosystem. Whether you sell through dealers or if you supply a support contact number. Now it might need to be available 24 by seven 365 and then how does your platform and ecosystem support the folks that are trying to deliver that support to their customers? And what are the features of your platform to do that? It also may take the form of creating the room in the space to think about what’s possible now that you’re engaging these users and we’re creating all this digital exhaust, there’s something interesting in that data, and those interactions, and how can we as a business take that in. Either creating insight we can use as a feature of the product or take that data and figure out how our customers are engaging with their products in their environment and how we can start to provide higher level services to our customers that are greater value. So you start doing your business transformation. So having the openness to be able to ask those questions, do the research. The analysis and then test those hypothesis as a function of what the platform and the ecosystem delivers.

Andrew: Aaron, that’s great. I think you just said something that I hadn’t thought of before. So as you just framed it out for me, launching that connected product isn’t business transformation. It’s like the start of my business transformation journey, and if I don’t do all that work after I’ve launched it all I’ve really done is created a zombie under the guise of transforming my business.

Aaron: Yeah, and then the other thing is, if you launch in you aren’t in a mode where you’re giving proper care and feeding to this ecosystem what about what if some of your assumptions about a feature that you implemented was wrong?

Andrew: Oh no, I’m always right.

Aaron: Right, yeah, exactly well then you know, do you just let it fail? All of that time and investment the inertia.

Andrew: That’s hard.

Aaron: So building the agility to come in and one know that something isn’t working or it’s a challenge for your users and then to be able to do something about it as quickly as possible is a clear way to prevent a failure from happening, prevent a zombie from happening it, but you can also then turn that around is an advantage because what if you do have this strategy of?, Yeah, we want to invest. We have all these great ideas, But what ones are the right ones? What are the highest?

So you don’t want to keep investing into the wrong thing and doing the wrong thing so being able to determine what are people using, how’s it affecting what in you know being able to do AB testing and continue to… It’s like it’s not even the ability to create new features is to be able to test them and be able to refine those and then deploy them as quickly as possible.

Andrew: Absolutely. Go ahead, Jen, what were you gonna say?

Jen: I want to build upon that AB testing. You know when we test conversations with humans, you know and there’s signals or signs that are sent with body language or the way people look at you or respond. You have to capture those and Aaron kind of addressed that with that AB testing. How do people, if you present two different scenarios, how do they respond? And that also applies internal to the organization, not just external, because if you’re engaging on the journey of transformation, you have to do your own testing of where the organization is competent and capable to move.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jen: So the speed of knowledge is crucial in your maturity evolution. And truthfully, what a lot of people I see struggling in IoT is because it comes from the mindset of like ‘Yep, I can do this all on my own I’ll be successful; I’ll be the hero. There is no hero in IoT. It’s always a team engagement. That’s why another interesting statistic that came out is more than 60 percent of the successful initiatives are because they brought in collaborative partners.

Andrew: Oh wow, that’s a great data point. So the more I collaborate, the more like them to be successful.

Jen: Bring in outside perspective. Bring in different industry thoughts. Bring in different expertise. You haven’t done this before. You don’t have the skills you don’t have the moves you don’t have the speed. And knowledge bring in others to help you accelerate and evolve quickly so you can keep that conversation going so you can build towards that customer lifetime value of what you’re striving for.

Andrew: Oh my gosh, I’m beginning to see it. So wherever I am on my journey that that process of continuous improvement matters, right? I’ve got to figure out what my structure is to constantly bring in expertise and new thoughts and new feedback and new perspectives and new data from my application, right?

Jen: And you’re going to have disruption points and massive inflection points. Aaron and I are dealing with a number of scenarios right now, where they’ve let them incubate on the edges, and now it’s time to do a massive disruption internally. And they need that inflection point of bringing Common Core elements to centralization to accelerate that speed of knowledge. What Aaron talked about earlier about centralization of support, some of those key interfaces of how teams work together. That needs to be pulled together so you can move faster and keep your momentum going, but also allowing customization out on the edge so when things are changing you can adapt quickly.

Andrew: Wow, so there’s a whole lot here to think about. There’s a whole lot here to think about how. What would you advise companies who want to think differently about their initial foray into the connector product space? Or maybe companies who are so overwhelmed by all the stuff they’ve got to think about that they’re afraid to start.

Jen: A lot of them I would say first of all just come in and ask for a baseline analysis. You know, because where you think you are might not be where you actually are. We see this with our OST maturity model when we encourage clients or others to take it. They think they’re further than they are and because they’re talking the language, but their actions don’t reflect that. So then when we engage with them, we hear what they’re saying, but we’re not seeing it reflected in what they’re actually doing. So then we can help them get to where they say they want to be quicker and faster or you know, understanding where they’re at and what the journey looks like. And so that maturity model helps them figure out where they’re positioned in the in the full life cycle of their IoT evolution.

Jen: Yes.

Aaron: Yeah, and it really helps them understand where they’re at and we’re based on where they want to go, what they should be working on, because Andrew you hit the nail on the head. There’s so much right, and it’s about being able to prioritize what you should be doing next and just look at this as a long term journey where you’re just putting one foot in front of the other and to be able to understand where you’re at and where you want to go tomorrow and the day after that really gives a lot of perspective on what the journeyman might look like. You know the other piece of advice that I would give to companies that are considering that they’re trying to figure out is start small. Don’t be afraid to fail, but be sure you’re testing like don’t build something in invest seven figures into something that’s built on their biases and their assumption. And then have the market tell you that you were wrong. That’s ugly. Whereas if you have a hypothesis, you know your market, you know who’s using your equipment, but be sure to test it as quickly as possible and don’t be afraid to be wrong.

Andrew: Oh, that’s great, Aaron. So what I hear you saying is, and that’s I’d love how those two pieces fit together. Start small, be prepared to fail. Fail small is what I hear you’re saying. Let’s make the failure as small as possible and as impactful as possible. Let’s make sure we’re setting ourselves up to learn everything we can from this experiment, whether it succeeds or fails, and then if I’m one of the 60 percent of new IoT initiatives that isn’t successful, it actually is for me because I got so much data and experience and learning out of it, and on a reasonably small investment that I know what my next step is.

Aaron: Yeah, absolutely.

Jen: What would you do different having a team around you. Maybe you tried it all by yourself the first time. Got so far.

Andrew: Ohh I’d be scared to try it by myself because what if I made a zombie?

Jen: Well, hopefully you kill it off quickly then and come back with a team of people to encourage the living and intelligence.

Aaron: Well, another way to think about it too is that you use the analogy of learning to ride a bike right for your kid, and you jump on a bike and you fully expect to fall. But you know that you need to get back up again and try again, and the next time you’re going to make it further down the road. Both usually set that expectation for yourself and others around you, whereas you know if you’re going to say well, I’m just going to get on this and I’m going to ride the first leg of Tour de France, and when you fall you have nowhere to go at that point.

Andrew: Right, right.

Aaron: And then if failing is the key part of succeeding then, then all you’ve done is set yourself off to only succeed. It’s a pretty rough road after that.

Jen: Well Aaron I’ll build on your biking. It’s also cab momentum. Truly, what is about biking is to carry your momentum forward. So in some cases you may hit an obstacle. Maybe being on your bike isn’t the best idea at that right time, and you need to adapt and change, get off and carry your bike off the obstacle, but keep moving, jump back on, take on that next obstacle you know ride through the puddle. Whatever it is in front of you, things that change, and as long as you’re moving forward and keeping the you know people engaged, you’re going to have success.

Andrew: Oh, that’s great. That that gives me hope. What are we talking about, millions of zombie IoT applications out there? Are we talking about, are there more zombie apps out there than there are actual legitimate live successful connected products?

Aaron: Yeah, the odds and the numbers will tell you right, Jen?

Jen: Yeah, I would just even from our engagements in my years of experience, those people are proud that they’ve got it connected. Do you ask them? Are you feeling to the stats? Are you feeling the success and reaping the benefits? Yeah, you kind of get that, ‘No, not really.’

Andrew: And what a great question to ask, beacause you gotta right? That’s what that’s what actually makes the business transform. That’s what actually gets you where you’re headed is that you ask yourself those questions, right? Or you find partners who can help you ask those questions and help you solve for. Aaron, any final thoughts you want to share with us?

Aaron: No thoughts. Jen, what’s your favorite Halloween candy?

Jen: Oh, what’s my favorite? Actually, almond joys. I know people don’t like those.

Aaron: I love all enjoys yeah absolutely. So that you took my answer but this shows you how much of a mind meld we’re really in? Right is almond joys would be my top, maybe Reese’s Peanut butter cups?

Andrew: Folks, you heard it here first: Almond Joy, the official Halloween candy of IoT experts.

How about you, Andrew? What’s your favorite Halloween candy?

Andrew: I probably Reese’s peanut butter cups or maybe Reese’s pieces, which I think might be the most perfect candy ever invented. Just a nice little piece of peanut butter in a candy shell. Doesn’t get much better than that for me though I love an Almond Joy.

Honestly though, there is no bad candy, all candy is good candy in the in the mind of Andrew Powell. Candy is like dogs, all candy is good candy.

Aaron: Yeah, I I just not a sure your candy guy. So like the Pixy Stix and all that other stuff. Jolly Ranchers: hard pass.

Jen: Well, come on the candy corn right?

Andrew: Listen, people throw Tootsie rolls under the bus all the time. People throw candy corn under the bus all the time. That is good candy, my friends. You don’t know what you’re missing. It might not be your favorite. Might not be your go to, but that is good candy. All candy is good candy. Anyhow, I was raised in a household without candy because I was.

Aaron: I was, too, yep.

Jen: Oh no, not us.

Andrew: All candy is good candy. Hey, partying thoughts. We’re in spooky season. People are people are heading off for their Halloween celebrations and heading off for their run up to Thanksgiving and Christmas is now a good time for us to think about transforming our stuff in the IoT space. Or is this something to put off till next year. What do you advise? Are there small steps I can I can be thinking about now?

Jen: Well, if you think about IoT’s building a conversation externally, you’re already internally having these conversations now with strategy season, budget planning. You’re thinking you’re involved internally in those organizational questions, and Aaron’s point earlier. It’s all about prioritization, as you’re going into 2021, what are those priorities and you know, it’s with spooky season comes the next season of you know how are we going to get it done now? Are we going to go play?

Andrew: And how are we going to make sure we have a great next year? Yes, I think I think a lot of us in 2020 are considering how to make sure we have a good 2021 more than we normally do in the run up to the new year too.

Aaron: Oh boy yeah for sure. Oh my gosh, you know and I guess parting shots from my perspective, you know I would challenge folks to look up, look around and think abou the broader context of what they’re trying to do, it’s more than just the features that you’re trying to develop. It’s the ecosystem, it’s the process and then it’s also the end users and all the other channels that are have it sitting so it’s a pretty big world and having that context and thinking about that context, we will help you get a good baseline on what you’re actually trying to do and what you actually need to do.

Andrew: Yeah yeah. So then my big takeaways I’ve got from you guys. Make sure I’m learning things from my first experiments, but don’t be afraid to kill them. Look for teams who can help me instead of feeling like I gotta do it alone. And avoid Jolly Ranchers and Tootsie Rolls. Do I do I have it right? Are those are big takeaways?

Jen: We love chocolate.

Andrew: Do we count Tootsie rolls as chocolate?

Jen: It’s kind of like a mangled version of it.

Aaron: It’s got cocoa in it, right? I say yes.

Andrew: OK, so we’re just going to avoid Jolly Ranchers then yeah. Otherwise, I think we made some good progress today. Jen, Aaron, and I’m so so thankful that we got a chance to talk about Zombie IoT applications and how we can how we can put them to their final death, can I say that?

Jen: Well and keep the living and the intelligent, happy and healthy.

Andrew: Absolutely, yeah.

Jen: Not eating Jolly Ranchers.

Aaron: I’m not a sci-fi person, so you’ll have to give me this luxury, but is a zombie like a one-way scenario where once you’re a zombie there’s no Un zombie-ing you.

Andrew: I think Aaron there are 50 or 60 years of good sci-fi that tell us there is no coming back from being a zombie.

Aaron: Oh man, this was the perfect analogy until we hit this like hiccup because.

Andrew: Wait wait wait. There has never yet been a way to return zombies to the living air, and maybe you have just presented for us the next step in sci-fi evolution. Go ahead, sorry.

Jen: Brain transplant.

Aaron: So if you if you have an IoT solution, that’s become a zombie, we can bring it back.

Andrew: Excellent, excellent. That’s great. Hey thank you both so much for your time. I’m so glad you got a chance to chat with us on 10,000 feet and I’m sure we aren’t the only ones who will enjoy talking about zombie applications in the future of IoT.

Jen: Thank you Andrew.

Aaron: Yeah, thank you Andrew, this is fun.

Narrator: OST. Changing how the world connects together.