Sebastian Egerton-Read is a content co-ordinator for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation , producing regular content across platforms, including Circulate .
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Few topics receive greater hype in the media today than the Internet of Things (IoT), and still a report produced by McKinsey & Co. last summer argued that the potential impact of IoT technologies might actually be understated. An estimated economic impact of $3.9-11.1 trillion a year by 2025 was the bottom line of McKinsey’s research.
Debates about economic value are ultimately intertwined with questions about how our global economy should function, but the raw figures attributed to emerging technologies are rarely accompanied with big-picture thinking around the frameworks and principles that should guide our economy.
IoT technological advancements could reinforce existing paradigms, simply making the current take-make-dispose linear economy more and more efficient, whilst failing to address resource and natural capital issues.
Alternatively, this new connectivity also offers the opportunity to re-think the underlying system and support the development of a circular economy . New technologies have been considered as being a key enabler of the transition to a circular economy, defined as being restorative and regenerative by design, while aiming to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times.
Identified as a significant business opportunity, circular economy models have gained increasing momentum over the last five years. Combine the principles of a regenerative and restorative economy, where the utilization and useful life of assets is extended, with IoT technologies, which provide information about the condition, location and availability of those assets, and there may be an even greater opportunity to scale new models more effectively, while providing new direction to the digital revolution.
To pose an example, the average European car currently spends 95 percent of the time parked. Large automotive […]
