PUBLICATIONS
22 Published papers, contributed articles, and a textbook

Published a piece today in IoT Central for digital transformation leaders within organizations, and how rigid organizational structures, inflexible cultures, and lack of market insight increase the probability of creating an IoT platform that is fragmented, brittle, and ultimately more susceptible to failure.

ABSTRACT: Many IoT challenges exist due to a lack of industry-wide standards around proven success. Everyone starts from ground zero, and few have crossed the finish line. Based on experience working on IoT-innovation programs across a variety of industries, here are five key considerations regarding where to focus your efforts early on and how to move your company forward as you build, deploy, and launch the next generation of your product.

Published a piece in IoT Agenda on the organizational psychology of the Internet of Things, centered on the interplay between team structure and software innovation, and how Conway's Law shows us that organizational design should be thought of in the service of digital innovation instead of its inverse.

ABSTRACT: Smart connected products will redefine entire markets and the very nature of competition over the coming decade. Organizations attempting to build smart connected products across divisions, product portfolios, and markets are being faced with a stark reality: creating IoT projects are hard and building a long-term organizational competency around doing IoT projects with excellence is even harder. Based on real-world experience, this article covers five key barriers to digital transformation, an organizational competency model for how companies become masterful at IoT, four case studies, and five behaviors that successful organizations embrace to drive lasting behavioral change.

Published in Appliance Design Magazine on how the Internet of Things is changing perceptions about product performance, repeat purchases, and customer loyalty:

ABSTRACT: With recent advances in low-cost sensors and communications hardware, appliances are beginning to become smart and connected, enabling more relevant user experiences, increased after-market sales, and new ways to monetize data. This article discusses how Internet of Things technologies and business models are changing the way in which appliances are designed, developed, manufactured, and supported in a way that enables manufacturers to compete on the global stage.

Published in Forbes:

ABSTRACT: Organizations attempting to build smart connected products across divisions, product portfolios, and markets are being faced with a stark reality: creating IoT projects are hard and building a long-term organizational competency around doing IoT projects with excellence is even harder. Based on real-world experience, this article presents five key behaviors that successful organizations embrace when starting an IoT journey. Finally, this article concludes by saying that smart connected products will redefine entire markets and the very nature of competition over the coming decade, and that the key to success tomorrow will be directly proportional to an organization’s ability to transform themselves into a digital enterprise today.

Published in Embedded Computing Design:

ABSTRACT: The Internet of Things (IoT) represents new opportunities for manufacturers to capitalize on the value of data for their business. One of those opportunities is through leveraging an approach called machine learning, which is a branch of artificial intelligence that enables machines (or virtual representations of machines in the cloud) to learn new behaviors based on their external environments, internal health, and changing inputs. However, in order for machine learning to work, humans must be able to grok the context of how the machine data is collected, aggregated, and consumed.

Published in IoT Agenda, by Mark Benson:

ABSTRACT: For many companies, the internet of things has suddenly become the thing: a techno-competitive mega-trend that can no longer be ignored. However, creating an effective IoT strategy — and carrying it out with excellence — can be difficult and confusing.

In a recent survey, all CEOs in the Fortune 500 were asked, “What is your company’s greatest challenge?” The top answer was, “The rapid pace of technological evolution.” IoT is a prime example of the rapidity of this technological evolution. The methodology for companies to stay abreast of this pace and meet it with the talent required to navigate it is no small undertaking, but success in the process will define the parameters of technology competition over the coming decade.

Published in Forbes, by Mark Benson.

ABSTRACT: As the Internet of Things (IoT) moves from early hype to production deployments, organizations that have historically made physical things now face significant challenges. Not only do they need to connect their products to the internet, but also support them. Because of this, many IoT innovation efforts take longer than expected or flounder without clear direction. Based on experience working with companies on IoT innovation programs across industries such as smart home automation, smart buildings and smart industrial equipment, this article describes five main symptoms of IoT programs that are destined for trouble and presents best practices for overcoming them.

Published in Industrial Equipment News:

ABSTRACT: Preventative maintenance programs are expensive, but downtime caused by equipment failures are even more costly. In this high-stakes endeavor, customers of industrial equipment manufacturers are looking for more visibility into machine health and especially, predicted machine health. This phenomenon is creating an opportunity for industrial equipment manufacturers to create differentiated and smart connected machines that provide granular machine health data that can be used to reduce operational expenses, increase product and process quality, and improve overall corporate competitive position.

Published in Dark Reading:

ABSTRACT: The battle between hackers of IoT products and the businesses that produce them is an arms race that is escalating in erratic fashion. New advancements in technology have enabled new types of Internet-connected products, thereby expanding the overall threat surface and opening up new opportunities for would-be attackers to wreak havoc. As enterprises struggle to respond, their behaviors can sadly be classified as either naive or fearful, neither of which produce effective results. This article explains the IoT security arms race between corporations and attackers and makes key recommendations on how to “win” the race via thoughtful approaches that balance usability and security in a way that keeps the cost to attack higher than the reward of achieving it. Examples and references to several industries will be provided including technology, manufacturing and healthcare.

Published in IoT Innovator:

ABSTRACT: Although it has been known under different names over many years, the Internet of Things (IoT) is suddenly the thing. The ability to connect, remotely manage, and monitor networked devices via the Internet is becoming pervasive. And the incredible rate at which IoT is growing has simultaneously created one of the biggest threats and opportunities for growth in recent memory. However, building an IoT solution is complicated. Sensors, short-range RF networks, gateways, security concerns, web services, information technology (IT) maintenance and monitoring, web and mobile application development, and enterprise integration are all parts of the system that must be solved. Enterprises seeking to enter the IoT space often have expertise in building durable goods, but not networking, sensor networks, or IT. Additionally, these enterprises are often very diverse, with numerous divisions, product families, and business models that only further complicate the already-complicated world of IoT. This piece outlines a nine-step sequence to enable diverse enterprises to create a clear IoT strategy that cuts through the noise and complexity, and establishes a common framework that can be leveraged by connected product families across an organization.

Published in Embedded Computing Design:

ABSTRACT: Analysts are predicting big outcomes for the macroeconomic Internet of Things (IoT) movement. The reality is that many organizations are facing internal dissonance in areas like: what the IoT is, what the strategy should be, and what things need to happen to execute on that strategy. How organizations respond to these challenges will define their competitive success for the next decade. This article presents the concept of IoT retrofits: a common-sense strategy to integrate in-field machine data into the enterprise in a way that reduces near-term risk, produces early success, and enables valuable insights that can be used to inform a long-term strategy.

Published in IoT Now:

ABSTRACT: With the pervasive growth of Internet-connected products, manufacturers are now being confronted with an exciting and terrifying set of truths: the opportunity to monetize the value of data has never been greater and the threat of new market entrants has never been higher. In order for manufacturers to transcend external competitive dynamics, they must first transcend internal organizational hurdles by transforming old ways of doing business. This article examines key steps to business transformation including the development of a cohesive IoT strategy, a clear view of customer needs, a viable business model, a reliable technology architecture, and agile organizational alignment.

Published in Electronic Design:

ABSTRACT: IoT device fleets are becoming more pervasive. As devices are becoming connected to the Internet, new possibilities for how to use the data are opening up. For any IoT solution, maturity occurs in three stages: (1) connected, (2) managed, and (3) optimized. Data analytics maturity mirrors these three steps: (1) when devices are connected we can get some descriptive data about them; (2) when devices are managed, we can generate predictive analytics on them to figure out what might happen in the future such as with a motor failure; and (3) we can optimize devices and user interactions by using prescriptive analytics to provide closed loop feedback. This article lays out the foundations of data analytics and data science for IoT device deployments, and recommendations for success.

Published in the Security Ledger:

ABSTRACT: As devices all around us become connected to the Internet, manufacturers of durable goods are finding themselves with the uncomfortable responsibility of solving security and personal privacy problems. This article points key reasons why IoT security is hard, including pervasive physical access, resource-constrained systems, complex deployment topologies, and inadequate organizational capabilities. Manufacturers willing to embrace security as a cultural norm for their organization can position them to turn security risks into strategic competitive advantage.

An introduction to the art of controlling the thermodynamic behavior of computing systems with software.

ABSTRACT: This book introduces Software Thermal Management (STM) as a means of reducing power consumption in a computing system in order to manage heat, improve component reliability and increase system safety. Whereas most books on thermal management describe mechanisms to remove heat, this book focuses on ways to avoid generating heat in the first place.

Published by Springer, New York (2014). Available January 31st, 2014 via Springer and Amazon.

Distributors include: Springer, Amazon (UK), cCampus, Knetbooks, Rakuten, The Reading Room, Bigger Books, Bokus, Todos Tus Libros (All Your Books), Abe, Desch-Drexler, All Bookstores, and Foyles.

Published in the Electronic Engineering Journal (EE Journal), by Mark Benson.

ABSTRACT: TI OMAP applications processors are powerful and flexible; this makes them well suited for managing difficult power and thermal constraints.

However, the complexity of OMAP parts is high and the ways in which to use them are varied and intricate.

This article addresses the problem of managing thermal performance in a battery-powered product design with TI OMAP processors, and also includes a special case study on the OMAP4430-based Amazon Kindle Fire.

Published in Real Time Computing (RTC) Magazine, by Mark Benson.

ABSTRACT: OpenCL is a programming framework for managing heterogeneous computing resources such as CPUs and GPUs.

OpenCL can be used to accelerate computationally-intensive algorithms in a robust and scalable way.

However, complicated problems often require complicated solutions, and OpenCL is a complicated (and powerful) solution.

This article delineates the complexity of OpenCL in two ways: (1) by describing the architecture of OpenCL, and it's primary organizing principals (static model, dynamic model, memory model, and compilation model); and (2) by describing how to use OpenCL in real-world applications (creating, building, compiling, linking, executing, and debugging OpenCL programs).

The article ends with a summary of next steps for OpenCL, and recommendations for further reading.

Published in Medical Design Technology (MDT) Magazine, by Mark Benson.

ABSTRACT: As the state of the art in diagnostic devices evolves within the context of our flattening world economy, manufacturers are facing key defining challenges that affect not only business performance, but also users and patients: uncertain regulatory landscapes, increasingly-demanding user expectations, and tightening cost pressures.

By analyzing and implementing design patterns from adjacent industries, we can influence diagnostic device design by opening the eyes of the design process to create more nimble, innovative, and disruptive diagnostic products within an increasingly competitive climate.

Published in the Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry (MDDI) Guide to Outsourcing, by Mark Benson and Ben Toner.

ABSTRACT: Organizations in a variety of industries are adopting mobile wireless technologies at an explosive rate.

This rapid deployment is dramatically increasing the demand on mobile networks. Wireless carriers claim that supporting the explosion in data services is affecting profitability.

The likely outcome will be new data plans to better monetize data services, which could include charging by capacity, speed, time of day, or content type.

This change creates uncertainty and potentially high costs in the business models for wireless data applications.

Published in Embedded Systems Design (ESD), by Mark Benson.

ABSTRACT: Cloud computing is an emerging trend. Consequently, more and more embedded devices are becoming connected to "The Cloud." Features that were previously included on the device are now being moved to The Cloud and provided as a service.

This trend not only requires a new way of thinking about system design, but also enables a new level of algorithmic analysis that is moving us closer to unlocking the true promise of device clouds: data visualization. (Retweeted by the Los Alamos National Laboratory.)

Published in Embedded Computing Design (ECD), by Mark Benson.

ABSTRACT: As telehealth home care continues to evolve, the wireless and medical device industries face numerous challenges.

This article explores technology, patient, and standards considerations, in addition to the necessary improvements to wireless technology – all factors critical to the ultimate success of in-home health care management.

Published in Medical Design Technology (MDT) Magazine, by Mark Benson.

ABSTRACT: Medium to large medical device companies often strive to become vertically integrated: they might own their own silicon fab, design their own hardware, engineer proprietary protocols, build their own testing and deployment equipment from scratch, and design their own custom manufacturing processes.

Although there are good reasons for companies in regulated markets to become more vertically integrated (control over diverse processes, control of quality, and control of the supply chain), it can often cause a technology drift effect over time between the company's core competencies and industry trends.

This article discusses how outsourcing can be used strategically in key circumstances to gain valuable access to otherwise unavailable and diverse solutions from non-medical industries for medical device manufacturers thereby minimizing the technology drift effect.