As one of the top ten global IoT innovators, Dr Jacqui Taylor has taken an unusual route to delivering IoT services across the globe. Her company FlyingBinary deliver privacy preserving and security-minded IoT services which leverage European legislation and regulation. This new approach to IoT has unlocked what she labels the Empathy Economy: the core of her company’s Brexit strategy for growth. Fresh on her return from Davos, Techerati asked Jacqui to dive deep into these burgeoning opportunities
What trends have forged the empathy economy?
The empathy economy is not something that will happen in the future …it is already here. These economical changes are already operating in the Internet of things (IoT) where machines are a part of our online journey whether we know it or not. It is part of the technology change for IoT which is being built using AI. The key difference with the changes IoT brings is this is not a change to a technology industry but a societal level change. If we are building our businesses online today we are already helping create and curate this new economy.
What role will IoT play in the driving value from the empathy economy?
Initially, the value was in solving the engineering challenges of IoT, particularly how to ensure privacy is preserved and how to deploy a security-minded approach. Second, it was critical to me as an international web scientist to deploy AI technology which considered citizens, all of us. Inclusion is the driving force behind web science.
My company FlyingBinary grabbed press attention in this space when we launched a service for the UK government which uses an empathy economy approach in response to changes that Brexit will bring. Our service interprets 20 of the 27 emotions across the social web to understand how in this case a government might answer the “wicked” questions, the unknown unknowns. This is a key approach now the use of social web data is illegal as a result of GDPR. This is what we call AEI.
What are some of the opportunities that can be unlocked from Brexit?
The opportunities are only limited by our imaginations. This is true provided we are intending to deliver products and services to change outcomes for the benefit of clients and/or citizens. These IoT opportunities can be as varied as clinicians using AEI to support young people in acute mental health assessment or using AEI on IoT streams of text, image or video to detect events of interest such as intruders in a secure location or identify the impact of fake news.
How can entrepreneurs and businesses go about exploiting these opportunities?
For those of us involved in the use of AI and IoT technology we are using it in customer service, as virtual assistants, in robotics, factory safety, improving healthcare provision.
The empathy economy has a wider impact for organisations and entrepreneurs and our future business models. Specifically, this will affect the way we will run our businesses, particularly the commercial models we use. Organisations and entrepreneurs need to be focused beyond the digital transformation which underpins most current business models.
At a minimum automation is a must, however, that misses the biggest opportunity. At FlyingBinary we have evidenced a 2x through to a 60x return on investment as businesses have moved to IoT services. Any IoT technology you are deploying as an organisation needs to have been architected to curate the entire IoT value chain.
In the focus towards reducing the negative impact of Brexit, do you think there is a case to be made that business leaders have been asleep at the entrepreneurial wheel?
Many organisations we work with have understood that IoT needs to underpin their future offerings. Brexit has accelerated that understanding for many. The UK has a growing and vibrant service economy which can be adapted to move towards these new IoT services. This is not true of the rest of Europe which is largely still dependant on an offline goods economy.
The UK leads digital transformation across the world. However the IoT is a more complex change, as I have said it is a societal change. Brexit gives the UK an opportunity to unlock IoT without reference to Europe. I have executed a Brexit plan for FlyingBinary with spectacular success and I am now recognised as one of the ten global IoT innovators as a result. I am planning to share this success plan with 1 million entrepreneurs.
Human interactions are the way in which we understand how to unlock the empathy economy. The time to unlock this IoT opportunity is now.
