IoT and the creative economy

There are many Internet of Things products: a diaper that alerts you when your baby is wet, a doorbell that takes a photo of a person standing in front of the door and sends it to your smartphone, an electronic rice cooker that enters recipes when you touch your smartphone to it, and a scale that measures even your heartbeat. A “Google car,” a car that allows even a blind person to drive, is at the pinnacle of IoT technology.

Gartner, a U.S.-based information technology research and advisory company, predicted that 26 billion devices, except for traditional internet devices such as PCs, tablets, and smartphones, will be connected to the Internet by 2020. The IoT industry is expected to generate revenue of up to 300 trillion won (273.2 billion U.S. dollars). Cisco CEO John Chambers said that IoT will be one of the biggest events in the high tech industry.

A study found that Korea is ranked only 12th out of 20 countries in competitiveness in IoT, scoring 52.2 out of 100 points. According to consulting group Accenture, the U.S. topped the list with 64 points followed by Switzerland (63.9 points) and Finland (63.2 points). Korea had good scores in R&D expenses, human resources, and the public’s purchase of products and acceptance of new technologies. However, it is weak in the business base (14th) and a momentum for innovation (13th). In other words, people cannot easily attract investment even with a technology and lack entrepreneurship in Korea.

It has been a chronic problem of the Korean venture ecosystem as well as IoT in that technology is not translated into the market. In the U.S., angel investors and venture capital companies are large in size and tolerant about failures. In contrast, Korean venture capitals are small in size and invest only in technologies that would never fail or can produce short-term results. The word “venture” does not fit. They want a test product first when a developer seeks an investor to make a test product on IoT. The “creative economy” will be moving from a leading country in IT to a leading country in IoT.