Since retailers - even major ones - tend not to spend money on research and development, many need guidance to keep up with the changes technology is bringing to the industry. What they need is Innovation as a Service.
If you think the internet's busy now, just wait until next year. Gartner estimates there will be 6.4 billion connected devices in 2016, up 30 percent from this year.
After the town of Cary, N.C., installed a water meter system that automatically radios water usage to the public works department, it eliminated 10 meter-reading positions. The water resources group operates today with a smaller staff, thanks to the Internet of Things.
New technologies are making food production more efficient and more environmentally sound. In fact, farmers are using everything from crop modeling tools to drones to generate higher yields.
Ikea's recently announced wireless charging line of furniture is expected to jump-start a trend that will amount to 10 million sticks of high-tech furniture sold in just two years.
To hear some tell it, the world will soon be abuzz with small drones that inspect bridges, monitor pipelines, survey crops and help assess damage for insurance claims.
There is no doubt that big data has become a growth market, and is becoming one of the few on-premises projects seeing increased spending, as companies move less data-sensitive functions to the cloud. But where's the needed talent?
