Early wireless solutions provided a means for making calls or sending bits between two stationary users through the air instead of over wires.  Then came cellular or mobile networks, with a new set of user devices, that allowed people to communicate from almost anywhere on the move.  Today, those same mobile networks are allowing us to do everything from accessing the internet and watching a movie, to navigating our way to a store and checking the status of our pets.  And just to make somewhat confusing, many of the things we will connect to via these networks are not mobile, like our refrigerators, electric meters, or TV sets.

While the mobile device and smartphone revolution has been remarkable by empowering users with broadband and computing anywhere they go, the more transformative revolution is just emerging, the “Internet of Things”.  There will be nearly 10 billion things connected by the end of 2012 and only about half of them will be people.  By some estimates (like the Word Wireless Research Forum), this could grow into the trillions by 2020.  Yet up until the present, the hundreds of millions of connected objects such as truck fleets, environmental sensors, and smart meters were considered part of the closed “Machine-to-Machine” or M2M world, virtually inaccessible from standard consumer devices.  (Even the term "Machine-to-Machine is intimidating to the average person!) This is changing.  Fueled by the integration of technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth, QR Codes, NFC, and Zigbee into mobile devices, we are lowering the barrier for people to interact with objects and open up a new category of innovations we call P2M or “People to Machines”.

With a few touches on your smartphone or tablet, you can check for an open parking spot from a meter, text your oven to preheat before you get home, turn the air conditioner on or off, get a tweet from your pet’s collar when they eat, or view the ingredients of a product when you scan it.  Wireless is the pervasive cloud that ties all of these things together to enable new forms of interaction.  The figure below illustrates how mobile is just a subset of the broader ecosystem that wireless ties together.

 

It is important to note that Mobile users have some very unique needs and expectations that differentiate them from fixed wireless users.  While Mobility REQUIRES wireless as the medium (since people would not want to walk around with a long cord attached to them), Mobility implies immediacy, or communications and applications within "arms reach".  It also increases the value of location, context, and proximity as critical to understanding the users needs, much more so than with fixed wireless users or things.  For instance, serving a mobile coupon up to a customer 1 hour after he has left the store probably has a lot less value than serving it up just as the customer walks out the door to shop. It would also be nice to know that a Mother is shopping with her daughter and son (based on proximity) versus alone to decide what type of offer to send her.  Lastly, mobile is implicitly social as you tend to want to share or get feedback at the instant you are experiencing something.  In fact social media is now the most used application on mobile devices, even more than web browsing. 

Mobile and Wireless are inextricably linked, with wireless being the enabler for mobile, and mobile having its own unique characteristics versus fixed wireless users or objects.    And while the “Mobile Wave” in itself has driven incredible innovation and is the hot term du jour for analysts to talk about, we need to think more broadly to unlock the full potential of the Wireless Wave which will include many more “things” than just those that are mobile.  Because the innovations around people connecting to things, or “P2M”, could be bigger than anything we have ever seen.  Think Trillions.  Think Big.

Even more interesting than the panel was the keynote by Geoffrey Moore talking about the need for a tectonic shift in Enterprise IT from “Systems of Record” to “Systems of Engagement” driven my Mobile+Social+Cloud.  Empowered end-users are demanding the same rich experience from enterprises that they are getting from consumer applications on their smartphones and tablets.  Enterprises that fail to innovate around the user experience will be subject to wrath of users that will find ways to innovate around them.  In the past, I have called this the “Big Flip” where the decision power and influence know longer resides with central IT but at the edge with these highly empowered end-users equipped with better technology than what the enterprise has in many cases.

While it is easy to point out the dilemma these organizations face, the harder part if figuring out what to do to fix it.  Many companies have looked for the quick fix by migrating their data to the cloud, adopting social networks for business, deploying tablets, or even trying to build a set of new mobile apps to address some of the obvious near term opportunities opportunities.   While these seems like reasonable steps to start on the journey, they may be window dressing on the a deeper issue lurking below the surface.  Does the organization need to change its fundamental approach to innovation to capitalize on this new technology wave?

Unfortunately, the innovation model in most large companies is broken as has been pointed out by countless thought leaders from Clay Christensen to Geoffrey Moore.  Yet most companies plunge into mobile and social the same way they address other critical needs in their business, throw resources at it and hope it gets fixed.  Without fixing the underlying innovation model, you may build one or even several beautiful apps, but will you be able to repeat it?

Based on some of my previous research around innovation models, there are several key building blocks that organizations should look to develop in order to get ahead of the mobile internet wave:

1)   Excellent sensing capability – the ability to observe and detect latent users needs and anticipate new inflection points in user behavior, technologies and business models will be critical to identifying the next set of high impact mobile opportunities for your business.

2)   Co-innovation testbed that supports the development and validation of new solutions with customers and partners.  This should include and integrated mobile-social-cloud environment and adequate seed capital to get these ideas to the point of proof of concept.

3)   Iterative Pilot Process that allows for quick deployment and updating of the pilot solution based on feedback from users in the field.

4)   Venture-like organization structure and incentives that enables the pursuit of higher risk, transformative solutions without the burden of short-term ROI metrics.

It goes without saying that every organization must tailor its innovation model to it own unique mission and culture.  But don’t assume what has worked in the past is sufficient for innovating in the future.  Failing fast, cheap, and often with users at the center of development and feedback will be a prerequisite to getting to game-changing solutions in the mobile+social+cloud era.