Realizing the Internet of Things: A Framework for Collective Action

The report frames the Internet of Things (IoT) as a 'new design language' for organizations, combining connectivity, computation, recruitment, and immersion to transform business models and government services. It identifies critical barriers to adoption, including fragmented technical standards, cybersecurity risks in cyberphysical systems, and difficulties in calculating return on investment. The authors argue that the current 'wild-west' state of IoT requires a global governance council and a shift toward multistakeholder collaboration to ensure sustainable development and shared value creation, particularly in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

• IoT is conceptualized as a 'new design language' consisting of four key components: connectivity (remote operation and data collection), computation (intelligence and customization), recruitment (devices interacting with other devices), and immersion (automatic and fluid integration of the first three).
• The convergence of digital and physical systems creates significant cybersecurity risks, where safety lapses can be weaponized by remote malicious actors. The report notes that a 2014 World Economic Forum estimate suggested cybersecurity issues could result in losses of up to $3 trillion by 2020.
• Two primary architectural patterns are emerging in IoT: 'Digital Twins' (or digital mirroring), where real-world objects are mirrored in the cloud to enable a 'Cognitive Firewall' for safety evaluation, and 'edge computing' (or fog computing), where computation is distributed between local devices and the cloud to ensure responsiveness.
• The lack of dominant standards has led to a 'wild-west' status in IoT, with various protocols (such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, 6LowPAN, and LPWAN) competing across different dimensions of power consumption, bandwidth, range, and latency.
• IoT adoption is hindered by 'paralysing' difficulties in calculating return on investment (ROI), often due to conservative analyses that focus on incremental benefits rather than holistic transformations. A Dell report cited that 48% of respondents listed budgetary constraints and 27% listed unclear financial benefits as barriers.
• The report emphasizes a critical need for massive organizational upskilling, as traditional IT skills only partially translate to IoT. This includes retraining rank-and-file employees, such as plumbers, to handle security protocols and device authorization.
• IoT has a strong potential to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a World Economic Forum and IoT Analytics analysis finding that 84% of IoT deployments currently address or have the potential to address these goals.
• The authors recommend the establishment of a global governance council for the IoT ecosystem to focus on sustainability and shared value creation, as well as a 'security observatory' to share best practices and warnings across sectors.

APA

World Economic Forum (2019). Realizing the Internet of Things: A Framework for Collective Action. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Realizing_the_Internet_of_Things.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Realizing the Internet of Things: A Framework for Collective Action. 2019. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Realizing_the_Internet_of_Things.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Realizing the Internet of Things: A Framework for Collective Action |date=January 2019 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Realizing_the_Internet_of_Things.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2019realizing, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Realizing the Internet of Things: A Framework for Collective Action}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2019}, month = jan, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Realizing_the_Internet_of_Things.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }