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Smart, connected products


Smart, connected products are products, assets and other things embedded with processors, sensors, software and connectivity that allow data to be exchanged between the product and its environment, manufacturer, operator/user, and other products and systems. Connectivity also enables some capabilities of the product to exist outside the physical device, in what is known as the product cloud. The data collected from these products can be then analyzed to inform decision-making, enable operational efficiencies and continuously improve the performance of the product.

Smart, connected products have three primary components; physical, smart, and connectivity. In Professor Michael Porter's and James Heppelmann's Harvard Business Review article, "How Smart, Connected Products are Transforming Competition," they describes the three components as:

Each component expands the capabilities of one another resulting in "a virtuous cycle of value improvement." First, the smart components of a product amplify the value and capabilities of the physical components. Then, connectivity amplifies the value and capabilities of the smart components. These improvements include:

The Internet of Things is the network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interact with their internal states or the external environment. The phrase "Internet of Things" reflects the growing number of smart, connected products and highlights the new opportunities they can represent. The Internet, whether involving people or things, is a mechanism for transmitting information. What makes smart, connected products fundamentally different is not the Internet, but the changing nature of the 'things'. Once a product is smart and connected to the cloud, the products and services will become part of an interconnected management solution. Companies can evolve from making products, to offering more complex, higher-value offerings within a "system of systems".

Examples of smart, connected products include:


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