Internet of Behaviours – The Next Big Thing
Published on : Thursday 07-01-2021
IoB or the Internet of Behaviours that builds on IoT is the next big thing to watch out for, says Mohua Sengupta.
The Internet of Things or IoT has been the buzzword of the industry since the early years of this decade and it continues to be a focus area for most organisations. More and more use cases and applications are evolving in almost every industry. As we all know, the IoT is a network of interconnected physical objects that collect and exchange information and data over the internet. The new kid from the same family is IoB or Internet of Behaviour. Slated by Gartner as the next big technology trend to watch out for in 2021, IoB has already become a buzzword in the industry. When Gartner had predicted this in their strategic predictions for 2020, Covid crisis was either not there or at least the world was not aware of it. This pandemic has given a major boost to Digital Transformation. IoT and IoB are in the front and centre of the same.
IoB builds on IoT. In simple terms, IoB makes sense of the data collected by IoT and attaches it to specific human behaviours such as choosing a particular brand. Being interconnected, IoT and IoB will grow simultaneously. IoB takes up where IoT ends. The data and information collected by IoT is converted into knowledge and possibly wisdom by IoB. The accompanying diagram from Chrissy Kidd’s BMC Blog is a simple diagrammatic representation of IoT and IoB.
IoB combines three things – Technology, Data & Analytics and Behavioural Science. Technology extracts the data and then information is extracted from the data through analytics. Thereafter behavioural science is applied to study human behaviour and to influence human behaviour. Usage and behavioural data, gathered by the IoT devices, provides insights about users’ behaviours, interests and preferences. This insight can be knowing about customer behaviour in a broader group or customer behaviour at a unit level. And this knowledge provides immense value to businesses since they can influence the behaviour of their customers and/or prospects to make more profit. As a result businesses are focusing more and more on IoB. In today’s commoditised world, the only true differentiation is in services and IoB enables business with better servicing capability.
What is one of the key enablers of IoT or IoB? Our smartphones. A smartphone can track our online movements as well as our physical location. Today many of us link our phones and laptops, our in-house voice assistants, house and car cameras, and in case of a smart home, almost all devices inside the house. This together with the social data from our social media footprint, can give a company details about our likes, dislikes, lifestyle, interests, favourite restaurants, favourite clothing stores, travel plans and destinations, travel duration, our buyer behaviour, our political affiliation and much more!
And using this data most companies can influence our behaviour in a way that they want. Usually it's used to observe and influence our purchasing behaviour to sell their own products. This has become a new marketing and sales tool for organisations – and a pretty effective one!
Few common use cases of IoB
i) IoT enabled cars are becoming popular and it shares data around a person’s driving behaviour. Once analysed, it will share his/ her detailed driving behaviour – How safely they drive? Where do they drive? How often do they drive the car, etc., and putting these all together the insurance companies can price their products in such a way that they can influence the drivers behaviour. This can be done customised for each insurance buyer or as a group of customers too.
ii) IoT enabled health apps in our smartphone can track our diet, our exercise, our sleeping pattern, our heartbeat, our blood sugar level, etc. Using this our healthcare worker can suggest behaviour modification that will help improve our health. The health insurance companies can suggest this too. That will be advantageous for their business. They can also price our health insurance in a way to influence our behaviour.
iii) Smartphones data and other lifestyle data gathered through IoT enabled devices can give a bank lot more insight about their customers and non-customers. Analysing that data they can push customised products to both sets, thus influencing their banking behaviour.
And today, this list can go on and on. And with every passing day the usage of IoT and IoB is increasing exponentially. As analysed before, this has now become an important marketing tool for businesses.
The ‘knowledge’ derived from IoB can be beneficial for both companies and individuals and both can gain from it, if used ethically. Hence it's extremely important for IoB initiatives to move from ‘knowledge’ to ‘wisdom’. The success of IoB would depend on making this shift almost simultaneously.
Is IoB an unmixed blessing?
While many of us are not happy to give away our data and are concerned about our security, we are doing it quite ungrudgingly, so as long as it's bringing us value. For the businesses it’s a great marketing tool. The IoT as a technology has been path breaking. Many of us like having our devices synced as this makes our life easier. The concern is about how the data is collected, analysed and used. Data security is the biggest challenge that the industry is grappling with today. The only thing that is slowing down the adoption of IoT is the security concern.
There is no doubt that IoT and IoB can provide data driven value. Banks can now influence us to save more; car insurance companies can influence us to drive safely and enjoy the benefit of low premium; health insurance companies can influence us to practice healthy lifestyles and thus enjoy low premium, etc. The IoB not only influences consumer choice, but it also redesigns the value chain in almost every industry.
The IoT gets into problematic territory because it deals with personal data and the legalities in the space falls short of the current requirement. The IoB interconnecting data with human behaviour and decision-making, demands a complete revamp of legal norms. Given the situation and the fast advancement in technology, it's high time that our legislations catch up and enable us to make the most use of IoT and IoB, without having to worry about security and safety of our personal data.
Having said that, IoB is still slated to be the technology to watch out for, not just in 2020, but in the years to come. According to Gartner, IoB is still in its early days, but by year-end 2025, over 50% of the world’s population will be exposed to at least one IoB program, either from the government, or from a private company. Gartner also estimates that by 2023 individual activities of 40% of the global population will be tracked digitally in order to influence their behaviour. So very soon, IoT will build an ecosystem of IoB that will define human behaviour. The bottom-line is that data and information collected by IoT will provide more and more knowledge. The sooner we convert it to wisdom, the better it will be for us. Today there are approximately 50 billion connected devices. This number has grown exponentially over the past few years and is slated to grow at an increasingly higher rate, and needs the support of all the legal boundaries and the knowledge being elevated to wisdom.
Mohua Sengupta is a Senior Business Leader, with 25+ years of experience across the globe, both in the Financial Services and IT Services Industry. In the past decade, Mohua has focused on Digital Transformation, Digital Banking, Distributed Ledger Technologies, Application of Emerging Technologies in Banking, Insurance Healthcare to name a few.