Supporting Internet of Things Activities on Innovation Ecosystems

Project Information

UNIFY-IoT

Grant agreement ID: 688369

DOI

10.3030/688369

Project closed

EC signature date 13 November 2015

Start date 1 January 2016

End date 31 March 2018

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 1 013 185,00

EU contribution

€ 1 000 000,00

Coordinated by

SINTEF AS
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - UNIFY-IoT (Supporting Internet of Things Activities on Innovation Ecosystems)

Reporting period: 2017-07-01 to 2018-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The overall concept underpinning UNIFY-IoT is to stimulate strategic cooperation and cross project support between the Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs) and potential platforms that will be used, conceived and developed under the IoT-EPI (Internet of Things – European Platforms Initiative). These include identifying new research and innovation mechanisms; deriving joint exploitation strategies on how to make successful ecosystems emerge; involving and coordinating the cooperation with the AIOTI, ECSEL, CPS stakeholders; giving input on and support extend the international cooperation; and responding to the societal challenges for Europe. It is essential that the IoT-EPI projects do not operate in isolation, are able to learn from each other's experience, have exposure to other research calls (both within ICT and beyond) and have the maximum chance to be widely adopted. UNIFY-IoT is the "glue", helping to make the IoT-EPI projects more effective through communication and cross project coordination and support in specific areas.

UNIFY-IoT project in cooperation with IoT-EPI projects have created several Task Forces (TFs) such as Innovation, Platforms interoperability, IoT Accelerators, IoT Business Models, Educational Platforms, International Cooperation that complement the activity chains (ACs) organised by the IERC and the working groups (WGs) organised under the AIOTI.

The activities and the achievements of the task forces are documented in the delivery D06.07 – Coordination Activities. The delivery D06.07 presents the overview of the activities of the Task Forces and the coordination activities for integration between research and innovation actions and the support measures provided by UNIFY-IoT and implement the supporting activities for aligning and synchronising the work with other initiatives.

UNIFY-IoT focus on the areas that are essential for the overall success of the IoT platforms developed or used by the IoT-EPI research and innovation actions (RIAs). Issues like value co-creation, IoT business models, technology developments for IoT platforms adoption, the requirements of education and interaction with standards bodies are all essential for the work of the research projects being adapted and having a real impact in the future. The consortium is committed to positive engagement with the research projects, engaging with the research teams to show how cooperation are beneficial to their work and enhance the likelihood of adoption and impact.

The UNIFY-IoT objectives are to stimulate the collaboration between IoT projects, between the potential IoT platforms, and to support these in sustaining the IoT ecosystems developed by focusing on complementary actions, e.g. fostering and stimulating acceptance of IoT technology as well as the means to understand and overcome obstacles for deployment and value creation. Through our coordination and support actions, we are aiming to be a "working partner" of the AIOTI and the IERC by coordinating and supporting the activities on innovation ecosystems, IoT standardisation, policy issues, research and innovation. Establish links with CSAs on relevant other LEIT-ICT challenges, and will keep a close eye on different generic ICT technologies that are related to the IoT field.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Value co-creation - The value co-creation framework is elaborated in deliverable D01.03 - Activities Fostering Value Co-creation: Interim Report to IoT platforms ecosystems implementing various IoT use cases and applications. The IoT business models framework is presented in deliverable D02.01 - IoT Business Models Framework, focusing on co-creators of value, moving from value chains to value networks, evolving from product value to network value, building new concepts of complex co-opetition, and providing strategy in relation to the entire value IoT ecosystem.

IoT Business Models - UNIFY-IoT surveyed and analysed several existing potential business models related to IoT: from specific deployment in case of process optimisation in different organisations, and produced a framework and a taxonomy of business models. The IoT business models concepts and framework is presented in deliverable D02.01 - IoT Business Models Framework that covers the identification and analysis of the logic of an IoT ecosystem (form by several companies), or an individual company, the way it operates and how it creates value for its stakeholders.

Innovation Support - UNIFY-IoT analysed existing IoT platforms on the global market and the deliverable D03.01 - Report on IoT platform activities provides an analysis that offers a comprehensive overview of all aspects of platform activity, from elements like communication capabilities, to the availability and quality of documentation, the ease of use of APIs, SDK environments and the use of innovation support events to engage with platform adopters and potential platform adopters. Delivery D03.02 - Analysis on IoT Platforms Adoption Activities, introduced an IoT platforms ecosystems maturity evaluation framework to act as a self-assessment tool for an IoT platforms ecosystem and its adoption readiness.

Education platform - The open education platform activities are coordinated with the task force on educational platforms with the aim to foster a comprehensive and converging European education offer on IoT and provide a user-tailored education on-line offer that address the needs of IoT stakeholders including students, researchers, developers, start-ups, SMEs and large companies. The activities identified and addressed two main pillars: IoT "hard skills" related to specific domains and IoT "soft skills" (e.g. business models, regulation, etc.).

Open platforms - The project builds upon the open platforms , activity chain started by the IERC and combines it with other initiative documenting project outcomes in collaboration with the Be-IoT and link it to www.iot-epi.eu portal. UNIFY-IoT project fosters connections between the IoT-EPI projects, the IoT community as a vehicle for project exploitation and link with application development. UNIFY-IoT uses the open platform concept developed as a specific vehicle for mapping the IoT ecosystems. The

Standardisation activities - Identification of standardisation strategies and reference IoT use cases that effectively enable (semantic) IoT interoperability, security, privacy, anonymity and confidentiality in IoT systems and platforms. UNIFY-IoT has interacted with relevant standardisation bodies including ETSI and CEN/CENELEC to systematise standard de facto emerging from the IoT-EPI projects.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The major impacts of UNIFY-IoT can be summarized as follows:

• Stimulating dialogue and collaboration between IoT projects (RIAs) and other stakeholders from the IoT ecosystem
• Favouring the emergence of an integrated offer on IoT technologies and platforms at European level
• Supporting the development of architectures and methodologies useful to provide IoT turnkey solutions
• Defining exploitation strategies to facilitate the uptake of successful IoT ecosystems targeting the major societal challenges for Europe
• Disseminating the UNIFY-IoT results to foster technology transfer and pre-normative activities
• Providing a set of mechanisms for value co-creation around IoT platform ecosystems, considering all relevant stakeholders and especially involving end-users (in collaboration with the other CSA) in an open innovation ecosystem.

UNIFY-IoT Ecosystem