IoT Advisory Board

January 2023

Benson Chan

Strategy of Things® LLC 1305 Franklin Street, Suite 507, Oakland, CA 94612 www.strategyofthings.io
IoT Technology Infrastructure Gaps Research

What

2

Economic Research and 

Analysis of the National 

Need for Technology 

Infrastructure to Support the 

Internet of Things (IOT)

NOFO 2019-NIST-TPO-IOT-01

Research grant awarded by 

NIST in October 2019

Scope

▪ Assess the current state of 

the IoT technology 

infrastructure

▪ Identify technology gaps 

across ten industries

▪ Calculate economic impact of 

closing the gaps

▪ Recommend areas of future 

federal IoT-related research 

investments

▪ Communicate these findings 

across government, academia 

and industry

Focus

Agriculture Construction Smart Cities

Insurance Healthcare Manufacturing

Renewable Energy Retail Transportation

Telecommunications

Strategy of Things® LLC 1305 Franklin Street, Suite 507, Oakland, CA 94612 www.strategyofthings.io
3

The Evolution of IoT

We see the evolution of IoT in five stages evolving from standalone applications today to 

a more advanced autonomous state in the near future

1

Things become 

“smart”

Now

2

Data of Things

Now

3

AI algorithms 

take action

5 – 10+ years

4

Utility and 

Outcomes

10 – 20 years

5

Hyperconnected 

Autonomy

30+ years

Strategy of Things® LLC 1305 Franklin Street, Suite 507, Oakland, CA 94612 www.strategyofthings.io Source: Strategy of Things
4

The Future of IoT Solutions and Services

Things become 

“smart”

Now

Data of 

Things

Now

AI algorithms 

take action

10 – 20 years

Hyperconnected 

Autonomy

30+ years

Utility and 

Outcomes

5 – 10+ years

Smart operations 

and processes

Smart “X” 

Factories, buildings, cities, farms, highways, 

etc.

“Plug and Play” Utilities

“X as a Service”

Fully Autonomous X

• Asset monitoring and management

• Operations monitoring

• Operational performance optimization

• Remote operations

• “Self service” analytics 

• Predictive maintenance

• Precision operations

• Digital twin silos

Integration of all operations 

with IoT, AI, data and 

algorithms, internal and 

external processes

Strategy of Things® LLC 1305 Franklin Street, Suite 507, Oakland, CA 94612 www.strategyofthings.io Source: Strategy of Things
Accelerators for future IoT

Things become 

“smart”

5

Data of 

Things

Sensorization Sensor/Actuator Densification

Connected Devices

AI algorithms 

take action

Utility and 

Outcomes

Hyperconnected 

Autonomy

Massively connected devices and system of systems

Vendor Ecosystems Industry and extended ecosystems

Analytics/Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Ambient Intelligence

Ubiquitous connectivity and computing

New Business and Operation Models

Policies and regulations

Secure and Private Trusted

Strategy of Things® LLC 1305 Franklin Street, Suite 507, Oakland, CA 94612 www.strategyofthings.io

Ethical

Testing

Accelerators

Now Now 5 – 10+ years 10 – 20 years 30+ years

Source: Strategy of Things
Technology enabling the future IoT

Things get 

“sensorized”

Strategy of Things® LLC 1305 Franklin Street, Suite 507, Oakland, CA 94612 www.strategyofthings.io 6

Data of 

Things

AI algorithms 

take action

Utility and 

Outcomes

Hyperconnected 

Autonomy

Future Technology Areas

• Edge Devices and Gateways – Processing capability, power efficiency, power management

• Distributed architectures – edge, mobile edge, cloud; interoperable system of systems

• Artificial and ambient Intelligence – autonomous intelligence, distributed collaborative intelligence 

• Trust Architectures and Models (security, privacy, self defending, self-restoring, distributed ledger technology)

• Communications and networks at scale (stability, availability, reliability, context and data aware, SDN)

• Data Models, Marketplaces, and Ecosystems 

• Ethical algorithms and governance

• Interoperability and standards

• Verification, testing, and simulation (algorithms, AI, systems)

• User experiences – interfaces, experience, man-machine interactions

Now Now 5 – 10+ years 10 – 20 years 30+ years

Source: Strategy of Things
Strategy of Things® LLC 1305 Franklin Street, Suite 507, Oakland, CA 94612 www.strategyofthings.io 7

Potential areas for future research

Source: Strategy of Things

Edge and device capability

• Increase device processing

• Reduce processor power 

consumption

• Energy harvesting

Improve infrastructure to 

support massive IoT

• Device management at scale

• Optimize QoS at scale

• Fault tolerance and resilience

• Middleware for scaling

Usable AI for IoT

• Ethical AI algorithms

• AI explanability tools and 

processes

• Collective intelligence IoT

• Human-AI collaboration

Enhance sensors

• Low cost sensors

• Extreme low latency sensing

• Field reliable sensors

Hyperconnected networks

• Connectivity and spectrum

management

• SDN

Data ecosystems

Standards and interoperability

Human centric IoT

• Design for human-AI interaction

• AI trust

• Accessibility and inclusion IoT

Trustworthy IoT
Strategy of Things® LLC 1305 Franklin Street, Suite 507, Oakland, CA 94612 www.strategyofthings.io

IoT: High level perspective and Public interventions

8

Things Connect Transform Analyze Use

Execution Systems

• Dashboards and alerts

• Business applications

• Operations applications

• Industrial applications

IoT Platform

• Collect

• Normalize

• Process/Rules/Policies

• Analyze, optimize + respond

• AI and automation

• Store

Things

• Sensors

• Actuators

• Meters

• Devices

Wireless Technologies

• Short range (BT, NFC, 

Wi-Fi)

• Long range (cellular, 

LPWAN)

• Radio

Cloud

Local or On Premise

Edge/Fog

Edge Mgmt

• Controllers

• Processors

• Storage

Integrate

Security and Privacy

Engagement Systems

• Text/SMS

• Twitter

• Facebook/Instagram

• Web 

Enable

Education

Standards

Liability

Research on key technologies

Scale

Procurement

Tax Incentives

Promotion

Legislation

Regulation

Partnerships

Develop

Innovation piloting

Testbeds

Regulatory-innovation sandboxes

Innovation and commercialization
Strategy of Things® LLC 1305 Franklin Street, Suite 507, Oakland, CA 94612 www.strategyofthings.io

Questions?

9

Benson Chan

Senior Partner, Strategy of Things

benson@strategyofthings.io

www.strategyofthings.io

1305 Franklin Street, Suite 507

Oakland, CA 94612

(510) 736-4699

www.strategyofthings.io