Charter

Description

The Economics Working Group provides a forum for the analysis of economic and business aspects relating to the development and implementation of the Internet of Things.

Identification and study of the economic context and implications is essential in order to foster the successful, fast, yet sustainable incorporation of IoT technologies into the real world. Exchange of opinions and debates on the potential models and the actions to ensure economic efficiency through these technologies will allow “exporting” specific or tailor-made models to other, more general, geographical or thematic scopes.

Goals

The main goals of the Economics Working Group are to:

• Perform market sizing activities in order to estimate the global business volume for the sector
• Analyse and categorise different applications and services according to their business viability or profitability
• Identify and analyse the market enablers that will drive the commercial acceptance and feasibility of the different applications (or application groups)
• Define and assess different business models, and the applicability of them to the different application categories. Try to infer or produce Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) that can be applied to, as much as possible, generic scenarios
• Analyse all the interrelationships of the value chain, identifying different monetary flows and potential frameworks for collaboration or agreements among involved players
• Provide intelligence to help decision makers considering investments or deployments of IoT-related services or technologies
• Foster Public-Private collaboration in the economic aspects of IoT

Scope

The Economics WG aims to collect and identify all potential IoT applications or services that may be of interest in terms of the business aspects. In fact, possibly all the IoT applications should have an economic analysis, as business model or economic sustainability should be always assessed, even when (monetary) profitability is not the key target of an application (as often is the case in “Health” or other public services such as "Security", "Environment", etc.)

These applications will cover any application sector and interest group that will be identified in the WG. A non-exhaustive enumeration, trying to list more important topics first, could be as follows:

• Energy
• Industry and manufacturing
• Transport and mobility
• Logistics and distribution channels
• Finance, banking and payment services
• Agriculture, mining and natural resources
• Environment
• Health (including fitness and wellness)

The Working Group must also consider and estimate the economic impact of IoT in other areas. In general, this WG should promote and support the implementation of IoT technologies in any context that may contribute to market success and further sustainability. With this aim, the following aspects should be addressed:

• Cost reduction and efficiency of IoT deployments
• Economies of scale
• Importance of standards and regulation in the cost optimisation processes

Criteria for success

The success of the Economics Working Group can be measured by different criteria:

• Active involvement is required from a range of stakeholders with an interest in the economic aspects of IoT. This includes:
• Representatives of the international economic and business community
• Business managers and strategists from technology providers, manufacturers, component aggregators and integrators, end service providers, and business-related agents (such as billing or payment solutions providers)
• Angel investors and venture capitalists with an interest in working with start-ups and SMEs in the IoT domain
• The production of high quality outputs. While attendance and direct participation in the WG is the preferred interaction model, the WG needs to communicated the results of its interactions with a broader audience through the production and dissemination of white papers, briefing notes, market forecasts and business models
• The quality of interactions between diverse stakeholders. The WG requires the contributions to be of sufficient diversity and quality to sustain informed discussions and to encourage international participation. A cooperative approach to interactions should be taken, seeking a win-win paradigm and avoiding “dominant position” situations. The interactions must be exposed to and valued by organisations that are external to the IoT Forum, covering a diverse set of backgrounds and expertise

Membership

The Economics Working Group will be organised to encourage the participation from the following types of organisations:

• Members of the research community from fields across technology, finance, retail and sector specific areas such as environment, energy, transport, manufacturing, leisure & entertainment, etc.
• Policy makers and regulators (with influence in the business context) aiming to define schemes and rules that may help the economic viability and sustainability of the sector and the developed services
• Any finance consultancy or business analysis companies aiming to size the commercial opportunities and market impact of IoT-related technologies in the short and medium term

Liaison / collaboration with external bodies

The Economics WG should maintain liaisons with other organisations that are also involved with IoT development, but who are not formal members of the IoT Forum.