The “Green-Mindset” versus Sustainable Ambidextrous Strategies for IoT Vendors

There are several solutions and developments within the IoT technology market that are positioned as green and sustainable and environmentally friendly. And while those definitions seem to be easy to understand, discourse is self-conflicting on this issue—it creates a particular misconception regarding the technology functionality. The difference between something that is “green” versus something sustainable is precisely the line that separates green philosophies and products out there that focus solely on “energy/environment/climate improvement.” While the sustainable technology would mean improving the social and environmental footprint at every stage of the product’s life, from raw material extraction to end of life. While it does not have to directly be related to environmentally friendly green paradigm

IoT “green” solutions could be seen in the waste management system, carbon monitoring solution, video surveillance of toxic gases, or air quality monitoring solutions. IoT and sustainability could be seen throughout specific functionality and data output enabled by the technology, such as:

• Monitoring the environment to reduce risks, i.e., alerting functions or thresholding on streaming analytics solutions
• Measuring and collecting data to produce actionable insights
• Feedback loops and efficiency benchmarking to enable “real-time” decision making to improve efficiency
• Applying advanced analytics and machine learning to improve strategic efficiencies and enable “intelligent decision making”

The sustainability buzz word is a great marketing tool for successful market positioning; however, as previously mentioned, it created a degree of misunderstanding of the solution presented to the market. Hence, can the same solution be 1) just green, 2) just sustainable, or 3) both at the same time?  

The answer is—yes. Yes and yes. For example, a real-time monitoring IoT solution is a sustainable solution with techniques such as pipeline monitoring, measuring, collection, and providing an alert function (feedback loop), enabling decision making in real time to prevent waste. The technology itself is a monitoring and alerting toolkit that could be embedded in the software or an IoT platform in the cloud and/or on-premises. While the technology eliminates the risk of human error and helps create greater transparency throughout the entire supply chain, it can utilize reliable insights in real time. While the other strategy of positioning of the product in the “green” would be to promote the application of such technology. For example, water monitoring solution, the solution that could be connecting the sensor data regarding leak detection that could substantially reduce both consumption and waste. While the technology doesn’t change, the positioning of the market's solution does—in the vertical versus horizontal way.The sustainability buzz word is a great marketing tool for successful market positioning; however, as previously mentioned, it created a degree of misunderstanding of the solution presented to the market. Hence, can the same solution be 1) just green, 2) just sustainable, or 3) both at the same time?  

Why are sustainable IoT applications at the center of attention? And what does it mean for vendors with no “green” solutions? The answer is simple—IoT vendors aiming for sustainable, or perhaps even green, need to make fundamental strategic planning changes in their go-to-market strategy. What go-to-market approach should they choose? The answer is an ambidextrous strategy.  

Organizational ambidexterity is defined as an organization’s ability to be aligned and efficient in its current operations and simultaneously adaptive and flexible to changes in the environment. It could be argued that organizational ambidexterity is rooted in balancing exploratory and exploitative activities. Exploration involves radical innovation, effectiveness, discovery, creating new markets and products, broad search, and revolutionary change. In contrast, exploitation involves incremental innovation, efficiency, refinement, routinization, local search, and evolutionary change. While the exploitation side could be utilizing existing technology, i.e., real-time monitoring, telemetry tracking, or streaming analytics in real-time, the exploration could be the go-to-vertical market strategy for the same technology in a specific use case, where the green impact could be showcased more vividly.

The ambidextrous strategy enables vendors to explore new value opportunities while managing and supporting their existing products and services. Therefore, it can be argued that ambidexterity is crucial for a firm’s proactive adaptation to external and internal changes. Following the ambidextrous strategic thinking, it is possible to argue that there is a specific mechanism in place that enables the firm to successfully manage separate “explore-and-exploit” subunits and leverage common assets in ways that permit the firm to adapt to new opportunities and threats. Such strategy permits leaders to reconfigure existing competencies and assets to explore new opportunities even as the organization continues to compete in mature markets.