Stanford Course BUS20: How to Build a Successful Business with Internet of Things
Updated on Aug 29th 2018: I am going to teach this course on-campus at Stanford again this Fall revamped content to Cognitive IoT and new speaker. Reg open. Class runs from Sep 25th to Dec 11th Tuesday evenings).
What is “How to build a successful business with the Internet of Things” course about?
This is a business course I created and have been teaching at Stanford Continuing Studies for the past two years. I am proud of 100+ students, industry professionals, who have created a business plan during the class and taken it forward to their companies and to create crowdfunded companies to solve business problems.
I am grateful to my students for the amazing class engagement and inspiration to keep me learning, teaching and mentoring on this topic at Stanford CSP.
The course content and format
The course consists of a 1 hour lecture from me each week. I bring in additional guest speakers who are industry experts, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to augment the class lectures with real industry experience.
The Course Content
Part 1: Introduction and The Internet of Things Landscape
First 3 weeks, I will cover the breadth of the IoT Landscape, Application spectrum, privacy, security issues and show how an IoT is built end-to-end. Then we go deeper into building a real IoT Business.
Students form teams and create a IoT Business Plan. Each week, I’ll guide them to build out a module of the business plan using my IoT Business Framework .
What IoT businesses do my students build?
Internet of Things covers a wide spectrum of applications. So do my student projects. Here’s an short-list of my diverse student businesses:
- Telefonica Madrid sends a couple professionals who keep the class focus global. A smart clothes tag came from a Madrid student.
- A baby diaper that is connected so you don’t have to stop and smell a diaper.
- PixlPlay, a connected Toy that was crowdfunded on kickstarter.
- A home automation service with dryer safety device for clothes dryers
- An IoT box to stop your home deliveries from being stolen
- A safe monitor to stop intruders
- Follow my student @karllashkari. He pivoted his career to IoT after my class and is always looking to hire IoT business professionals to build IoT Solutions.
- Follow my student richard meyers as he blogs about IoT products or edits case studies about Digital Transformation leading to Autonomous Vehicles in Mercedes-Benz.
Industry experts Augment my class (I update to new speakers each semester)
Here’s a subset of my past class speakers:
Fall 2018 List of Guest Speakers
Industries covered include: Wearables, Smart Home, Retail, Digital Health, Fintech, Connected car, Smart cities, , Enterprise IoT, Intelligent Transportation, Digital Health and Enterprise IoT.
Key topics covered:
IoT Customer Experience is one of the class’s favorite topic with fun discussions about how to create a seamless IoT experience and the difference between consumer and B2B businesses. Mark Spates was a repeat guest speaker who takes us to the basic definition of what is the purpose of a light bulb, challenging students to focus on the customer.
Value Creation from IoT Data is my personal specialty (many of you know this from my eBay past at Mobile Growth/Analytics) and my industry keynotes. I start with introducing variety of IoT data and use cases for historic, real-time data and lead to Machine Learning and Cognitive IoT data. The focus is on business value creation and exposing that value in the business created.
In Fall 2018 class, I plan to cover Analytics and Inference on the edge with new industrial IoT (IIoT) use cases.
Cognitive IoT is IoT + AI
AI in the context of IoT covers Facial recognition for security camera, NLP for voice assistants, Deep learning for self-driving cars, Predictive Analytics for Industrial IoT, Inference on the Edge for Mobility sensors, movements of Robots and Drones and Machine Learning of Health Informatics.
My students will answers for questions such as “Is facial recognition the killer app for AI?” The possibilities are endless.
New IoT Business Creation: I cover many case studies from my book “The Internet of Things Business Primer”. Invited speakers share their experience on building and scaling IoT businesses. Here is an entrepreneur from France, Hussain Ahamed, CEO of Maintool.me. He visited our class (below is my recording when I met him at a conference) and shared his many design iterations and how he got funding to create a new smart watch business.
WrapUp: IoT Investment Landscape
Students get to optionally present to a panel of angels and venture capitalists who specialize in IoT. Anupam Rastogi of Nokia Growth Ventures is our repeat favorite speaker who talks about scaling a business past $20 million with a focus in Enterprise and IIoT.
Let me know if you have an IoT business use case that I should look at to include as a case study or if you have questions about the course if you are considering joining the class. Or simply if you have an opinion about any of my class content, I am always in learning mode.
ABOUT SUDHA JAMTHE
Sudha Jamthe is the CEO of IoT Disruptions and founder of DriverlessWorldSchool.com
She is a globally recognized author, technology futurist, Stanford CSP instructor with courses about building Cognitive IoT and Driverless Cars businesses. Her specialty is business models and value creation from data. She enjoys shaping new technology ecosystems and mentoring leaders on digital transformation. She chairs the strategic advisory council of Barcelona Technology School and is an Ambassador for FundingBox Impact Connected Cars (H2020) Community.
- Followup her on Twitter, LinkedIn , Medium, YouTube
- IoTDisruptions.com (newsletter about IoT, AI, AV)
- DriverlessWorldSchool (online courses)
- How to Build a successful business with Internet of Things (BUS20) course on campus at Stanford Continuing Studies (Tuesdays 10 wk Sep 25th to Dec 11th 2018)
