Regarding the pace and problems of the development of the Internet of Things (in general and in its individual segments), you can find various expert opinions. Some developers and experts talk about the technical and technological standardization of the interaction of things and the need to accelerate the introduction of common communication protocols. Others emphasize the unconditional security of transactions for users and devices. The opinion is expressed about the unsolved problems of the devices themselves in terms of providing sources of constant power supply, stable operation and usability. Some skeptics are inclined to believe that users, psychologically and socially, are in principle not ready for a comprehensive digital environment.



But let's think about such a limiting factor in the growth of the Internet of Things segments as the owners and management of companies do not understand how to conduct business in a new global information economy, increasingly focused on multi-level “instantaneous” digital interaction between consumers, things and algorithms. Maybe this factor becomes the main “brake” for IoT?
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A. What is new in a “digitized” economy?

1. The global information network has penetrated almost everywhere - this means that access to any information is instantaneous from anywhere.

2. Devices have become mobile and smart - this means that a lot of things have learned how to independently implement quite complex parametric dependent functionality and exchange structured data.

3. Users have become massive and demanding - this means that users of things are now quite diverse in terms of professional and psychological level, they are able to make complex demands on things and functionality, and expect a personalized approach to their needs.

4. Information has become a major and expensive resource - this means that many qualitative information has become more expensive than any material resource, and the monopoly on information has become too expensive to defend. On the other hand, without significant information support, it is now impossible to develop new projects and businesses.

5. Professionals felt independence - this means that specialists freely change areas and areas of work, and the knowledge they possess flow from project to project. A high-class specialist is in short supply and is expensive for a business, and control of its effectiveness and efficiency has become much more complicated.

6. Risks have increased significantly - this means that it is necessary to defend against increasingly complex risks by undertaking various insurance, reservation, monitoring, and diversification efforts by transferring valuable financial resources for these purposes from core business competencies.

7. Dependence on partners and competitors has grown - this means that business is increasingly looking at the actions of partners and competitors, is closely watching what is happening in the market and is very sensitive to changes.

8. Marketing has become aggressive and complex - this means that it is necessary to competently and effectively carry out a market (consumer) business strategy, not giving in to external marketing gimmicks. Understanding the essence of the products offered has become an order of magnitude more difficult, and the consequences of making the wrong market decisions are becoming less and less accurate.

9. Management tools are largely outdated - this means that company management uses tools (techniques, technologies, devices) that were developed for the previous “pre-digital” economy and in many ways limit the ability to make timely quality decisions.

B. What does today's business not understand in the new economy?

1. What physical things and logical objects should be connected to the Internet and what will it give to the business? This is an important issue for the efficient use of scarce resources. You can use a significant amount of things and employees in the information exchange, but what benefits can be derived from this and how to use it in strategic or operational management. While the business has to somehow deal with informational internal flows, huge amounts of data from potential and current customers, for example, from wearable devices or from social networks, have already become available to it.

2. How to manage things, not people? Management is traditionally focused on personnel management. But now there are things that can also be controlled. In the first approximation, it seems wonderful and convenient to issue assignments to robots or algorithms that clearly and implicitly carry out various tasks. But after a while, the manager realizes that the same robots and algorithms are only interfaces and functions that are implemented within established limits by other people and are prone to errors (often containing them) and not able to correct or somehow compensate for them. Things (robots, algorithms) are fairly straightforward in their actions and decisions and do not know how to independently adjust (adapt) the specified business processes (functions), reacting to the dynamically unfolding environment around.

3. How to find a client and please him? It is not an idle and actual question in the conditions of constant market dynamics, changeable moods and strong information dependence. Increasing detail is required and available for market segments, but competition is growing. The timing of the withdrawal of new products is reduced and at the same time the opinion of consumers about such “raw” products forms a general negative attitude towards companies and individual projects. It would seem that successful development fails and is not in demand due to minor problems, defects, inconvenient interface, failures, time delays in execution. Yes, in addition, the negative reaction instantly spreads in the network delighting competitors with its “murderous” emotionality.

4. What to do with such a resource as information and how to manage it? If earlier business was looking for valuable information, today it is clearly in excess. That's just the question of its quality and value is quite acute. Everything was relatively simple with the purchase of materials and raw materials, with their warehousing, issuance into production and the production of finished products. Information is completely confusing management, and the most complex mathematical-statistical methods actually make decisions "blindly" trusting the "nebulous" mathematical models that are created by undoubtedly talented professionals, but often have little knowledge of the subject matter, economics and marketing of the business.

5. How to create a “dream team” from remote jobs, freelancers, independent experts and beta testers? Forms of attracting specialists to the business are now available different: permanent and temporary, convenient and effective, remote and not very. Collecting a truly productive team becomes somewhat more difficult and costly, and control over its activities has to be built according to new principles. The very concept of “management” is undergoing significant changes, because professionals understand better and more about what and how they should do, how to organize their own work and are even able to attract third-party co-workers. Effective management now depends more on management's ability to correctly find and process information resources from differentiated sources, monitor the market and regulators, coordinate tasks and functions of different business areas in time and, of course, develop and monitor sustainable execution of the strategy.

6. How to protect against new risks? To the technogenic, natural, and economic risks were added not less complex and dangerous - information and communication. For many years, they have complicated the traditional risks for risk management with which contact has more or less been established. It is not enough to try in every way to skillfully avoid adverse events, it is desirable to control their flow, and after the end, to restore the business or project to a steady state.

7. How to interact with partners and competitors in the conditions of constant and deep dependence on each other? The market situation is becoming more dynamic and less predictable. Yesterday’s competitors are becoming partners today, and current partners may be irreconcilable competitors tomorrow. Moreover, for some projects, businesses are in tough opposition, while for others they are forced to work closely together both economically and technically. This complicates the work of management and pushes an excessively flexible marketing policy. In some cases, the boundaries of the interests of a business are so blurred that it is difficult to say where its zone of activity should end. Customers become more demanding and companies have to take on additional responsibility (guarantees).

8. How to personalize marketing? In an environment where markets require high-quality and low-priced products, and production is able to flexibly navigate to any design and artistic solutions, it becomes really difficult to adapt and communicate with each specific client (current or potential). Many information channels are overflowing with activities, events, loyalty and other noise. Reaching out to “your” target client is too expensive, and understanding who is “your” client is difficult. In a consumption economy, when a multitude of goods, works, and services are so closely related, businesses no longer have enough information about simple "flat" market segments, he wants to know as much as possible about difficult market segments, wants to detail consumers in a multi-level classification, wants to somehow manage not only the relationship with customers, but also customer relationships with each other.

9. What should be the new management tools and automated systems? The total automation of business management, built on regulated functionality and “freezing” business processes, increasingly requires revision and rethinking of basic principles. The “mobility” of access to accounting systems and the ability of the manager to connect to the decision-making process on the fly were enthusiastically perceived. But as it turned out, this is not exactly what is needed. Rather, this is what is obviously required in the active information space, but does not define a key competitive advantage. And what then determines it in terms of information technology? Maybe you need multiple information management tools matched on a single platform? Or you need a comprehensive platform with an adaptive expanding configuration? By the way, besides process IT systems, a business is forced to make decisions regarding content storage systems, cloud access to data and functions, analytical computing tools, etc.

C. What hinders the development of the Internet of Things?

1. Economic entities do not understand and do not know how to get additional effectiveness or efficiency from the use of an expanding network of interaction of things. Investment in IoT infrastructure for business is quite high, and the result is not so obvious. Unlike patch automation, the use of a partial transition to the industrial or management Internet of things seems to be extremely doubtful.

2. Re-equipping business processes and replacing “simple” things with “plug-in” is only half of the big case for moving to IoT. No less important is the reorganization of the business processes themselves under a new class of devices and logical (software) objects. It requires a change in the principles of interaction of specialists with the network of “smart” things, with “advanced” robots and information flows. In essence, it is necessary to fundamentally rethink the business model, including the ways of forming competitive advantages and deriving business income. If automation has left some chances of preserving at least some of the traditional business processes, that the Internet of things is too demanding in this regard - it is necessary to consider the problems comprehensively and extensively. And the artificial narrowing of the issues and scope of IoT leads to an obvious inefficient investment.

3. The consumer will never pay an extra price for incomprehensible and raw but technologically sophisticated products. The Internet of things really offers innovative products and services for a price higher than the traditional one, but the client needs to show not a prototype, but a ready-made truly convenient and integrated way to solve its problems. IoT-product on the basis of its very essence is forced to satisfy not one or two related needs, but a wide range of them. This greatly complicates the development of new products and things, complicates the introduction of the first versions to the markets, complicates the marketing strategy.

4. Information fundamentally changes the economic behavior of individual subjects and industries in general. It would seem that the efficiency of its receipt and processing can really accelerate many scientific, technical and investment processes. But consumers and investors, taught by their own “market” experience, create a “delayed decision” effect. Why rush into buying a newfangled device or investing significant financial resources in a promising idea - it is worth waiting for “additional information” from the market, from competitors, from experts, from insiders. The consumer and the investor are patiently waiting, and the business, which in turn is waiting for a decision from them, also gradually goes into the mode of “deferred decision making” with its ideas, prototypes, and developments.

5. To form an effective team of professionals has become truly important for success, but the main initiators for creating such “dream teams” in the field of IoT projects are technical and technological innovators. Unfortunately, they can not always do it adequately and effectively. At a rapid pace, start-ups take in business and allow specialists with insufficient training to the key economic, managerial and marketing functionality, which at some stages seriously “slows down” a developing project, and in some cases can lead it to a complete halt. Attracting classroom professionals is also a problem for innovative companies and IoT projects in terms of decent pay for hired employees. In addition, the businesses themselves in the early stages of development and in the risky market of the Internet of Things are not sustainable and have little promise in terms of career growth.

6. The uncertainty and cautious assessment of the occurrence of “expensive” and “difficult to fix” adverse events due to the transition to the Internet of Things technology makes for a careful attitude to its implementation. At least, none of the leaders are in a hurry in this matter, but are trying to act consistently and methodically. In a certain sense, this holds back the IoT sphere - everyone understands the dangers and risks of the Internet of Things, but few understand how to reduce risks and how to protect the business and its customers.

7. The vast majority of IoT technologies require mass users and a developed network of partners, services, and communication nodes. The Internet of Things is a unique technology that allows you to look in a special way at the interaction of man and the world of things. IoT, in a sense, allows us to eliminate the boundary between the virtual information space and real physical objects (machines, structures, instruments, tools, structural details). But truly, the IoT segment begins to work powerfully only within the framework of a unified community, in which a favorable atmosphere is created for building up technical, technological, informational, consumer, economic, creative, business opportunities. If the major players of the segment close it (monopolize), then problems with further full development are very likely. Quite quickly out of the "closed" segment will begin the outflow of consumers due to the reduction of the dynamism and quality of services, due to the restriction of functional and cost competition. Resources for the development of IoT need not small and only the constant extensive and intensive expansion of its borders allows you to maintain interest in it and to form consumer activity.

8. Products (goods and services) of various IoT-segments for the consumer are really complex and fundamentally different in their consumption methods from traditional goods (services). Marketing is used to researching, studying the market and responding with suitable products. Marketing communications are fairly simple and linear, and CRM systems do not meet the dynamics of global Internet interaction. Some businesses successfully introduce new marketing information technologies, but for the most part companies, especially traditional ones, simply do not know how to build “special communication” in conditions of complete openness and accessibility of information. Products of the Internet of Things reach the “heart” of the consumer for too long - they give him a feeling of complete satisfaction, therefore it is necessary not only to offer them intelligently, but also immerse the client in the “digital world”, actively and unobtrusively train him to live in this world of related things, convince him in the convenience and efficiency of globally-interacting devices, to keep the client up to date with the latest developments and captivating him with an independent search for the optimal combination of devices for realizing their own needs.

9. When doing business in the field of Internet of Things, the volume of information processed increases dramatically, and the level of decision-making becomes extremely high. This is due to the ever-expanding flow of information and the continuous innovative development of this technological sector. There are many alternatives of economically sound decisions, but the business’s understanding of this set of options, some of which seem very successful and others less risky, does not allow for strategic (and sometimes tactical) actions without comprehensive preparation. Entrepreneurs and managers are clearly aware that it is possible to really improve and optimize the decision-making process in order to obtain a more convincing result. However, many alternatives significantly complicate the selection of the best strategy and tactics.

Many processes, phenomena and events of the new "digital" economy, no one has learned the current and generated by her own business. You have to act by trial and error. But after all, one “serious” mistake can cost dearly not only for a particular company, but also for the industry as a whole. A single “catastrophic” event can permanently close an entire segment of the Internet of Things, creating certain fears among businesses and consumers.

On the other hand, barriers at the entrance to a highly professional modern business are quite high. It is required to implement in one degree or another such functionality as:
- data analytics
- knowledge management and successful practices,
- maintaining a high level of competence,
- design of basic and specialized business processes and models,
- the study and use of integrated marketing and financial schemes,
- development of platforms and standards, protocols and regulations,
- improving the efficiency of communication with potential and current customers,
- continuous improvement of production, technological and managerial processes,
- introduction of elements of risk management, etc.

All this requires considerable resources, and not only financial ones. The issue of attracting and retaining highly qualified specialists is urgent and urgent.

An important task of the business community to support the sustainable development of the Internet of Things technology is the intensive creation of information and economic space supporting IoT projects on a wide range of problems and issues, both in terms of technical and information technology, as well as in financial, economic, marketing and managerial.