Accenture: Today's Internet Of Things Is Not Sustainable
The current focus of IoT is misplaced on technology and gadget, and not where it should be - creating a better experience for consumers, according to the Chief Technology Officer of Accenture, Paul Daugherty. Speaking at MIT, he added that the reason for the high abandonment rate of wearable technology is "because they&rsquo;re gadgets that people don&rsquo;t find sustainable value in."
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Accenture: Today's Internet Of Things Is Not Sustainable

Meghan Ottolini

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Accenture CTO Paul Daugherty took the stage at a recent event at MIT to introduce the company’s take on connected technologies: the "Internet of Me," which is a different approach to connected technology than the Internet of Things.

’We believe that a lot of focus on the Internet of Things has been misplaced and has led to a focus on technology and gadget, and the focus needs to be on creating better experiences for consumers,’ Daugherty said.

The explanation was part of a presentation around Accenture’s digital vision for the near future. Daugherty said the current approach of the Internet of Things around gadgetry may be good business now, but consumers have not developed a loyalty to the technologies.

’Wearable consumer technologies have the highest abandonment rate of any consumer product category. That’s because they’re gadgets that people don’t find sustainable value in,’ he said. ’I’m generalizing, there are some that are good, but generally people abandon them at a rate of seven in 10 people within one year.’

The CTO pointed out that the churn around life cycles of small consumer gadgets profit businesses, ’but the customers aren’t using them sustainably.’

Other trends on which Accenture will focus are the ’outcome economy,’ platform-driven businesses, intelligent enterprise, and the ’workforce reimagined,’ he said.

’There really needs to be a focus on the workforce and thinking about how the workforce works in different ways, and looking at both the policy and the corporate implications of how we can prepare the workforce to work in a new way. And a lot of this will be connected around how people interact with technology in a different way to work more effectively, work more safely,’ Daugherty said.

PUBLISHED JULY 13, 2015