Introduction: advances in IoT research and applications

Citation

Wang, P., Chaudhry, S. and Li, L. (2016), "Introduction: advances in IoT research and applications", Internet Research, Vol. 26 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/IntR-06-2015-0183

Introduction: advances in IoT research and applications

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Internet Research, Volume 26, Issue 2.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term that has been introduced in recent years to describe objects that are able to communicate via the internet (Li et al., 2015; Reaidy et al., 2015). Assuming that objects have digital functionality and can be identified and tracked automatically, IoT can dramatically streamline how the industrial and commerce systems will be operated and managed. As such, IoT is becoming an emerging internet-based industrial information architecture that can be employed to facilitate industrial integration (Siemens, 2015) and industrial information integration (Xu, 2015). The significance of IoT to industrial and commerce systems has been recognized, as IoT will have an impact on the global economy. Many new opportunities in applying IoT to various industrial sectors are available today or can be foreseen in near future (Bi and Cochran, 2014; Fang et al., 2015; Han et al., 2015; Li, 2012; Whitmore et al., 2015; Xu et al., 2014; Yu et al., 2014).

In this evolving process, IoT and its related technologies and platforms have been developed to meet industrial demands. There are a plethora of issues needed to be addressed. These issues have been the central topics at a series of related conferences organized by IEEE, IFIP, ACM, and other societies including IFIP’s Confenis, IEEE SMC International Conference on Enterprise Systems, and other conferences.

The purpose of this special issue is to report on the state-of-the-art of, and emerging trends in research and practice of IoT. It provides a premier forum for researchers to present research results in all areas ranging from architecture, security, to implementation of IoT as it is permeating and integrating into industries and business.

This issue presents eleven papers authored by scholars from Sweden, UAE, UK, US, and China. To prepare for this issue, all authors were asked to respond to at least two rounds of peer review. Each paper emphasizes the importance of IoT from a unique perspective.

The emerging IoT is believed to be the next generation of the internet and will become an attractive target for hackers. The paper by Li, Tryfonas, and Li addresses IoT security, which involves the sensing infrastructure security, communication network security, application security, and general system security.

The paper by Nolin and Olson explores the connections between the evolving technology of IoT and notions of convenience. In particular, the concept of α convenience is introduced to articulate the broad scope of internet “any-everything” connectivity.

Manufacturing industry is an important component of a nation’s economy. In recent years, manufacturing sector counts approximately 12 percent of GDP in the USA. The paper by Bi et al. investigates the enabling technologies of the IoT that is applied in manufacturing industry.

The paper by Nguyen et al. examines the role of capability and alliance arising from the IoT. The paper investigates the direct relationship between IoT capability and alliance. Improving these relationships may assist in ensuring that new knowledge from the IoT can be translated into tangible business innovations that contribute to economic development.

A cold chain refers to the transportation of temperature sensitive products along a supply chain. Currently, business begins to apply IoT to identify, position, track, and monitor objects. IoT is an ideal technology for remotely monitoring the real-time status of perishable goods in the cold chain. The paper by Luo et al. proposes an intelligent tracking system for the cold chain by integrating IoT and tracking technologies. The goal of this intelligent tracking system is to achieve effective live monitoring of goods in the cold chain at the lowest cost and the simplest protocols.

With the rapid development of the IoT in recent years, business networks have been becoming one of the main operating platforms for enterprises. More and more users prefer retrieving business information from the business networks. The paper by Xu et al. propose business network information ecological chain (BNIEC) as a new tool to facilitate information flows in the business networks. BNIEC can be utilized to maintain the sustainable development of the business networking environment in IoT era.

Internet and IoT venturing is a highly exciting endeavor to entrepreneurs and investors. However, research on new internet and IoT venturing is lacking. The paper by Guo et al. addresses the gap by developing and testing a theoretical model that links venturing principles (effectuation or causation) to new internet and IoT venture growth through resource bundling approach.

Fast-growing online retail market provides convenience for customers. Online retailers need to improve online shoppers’ satisfaction level in order to keep their loyalty. Logistics service is an important component in online retailing, especially those equipped with emerging technology such as IoT, which will affect online shoppers’ satisfaction level. By applying expectation confirmation theory, the paper by Hu et al. explores the solution of such issues. The paper provides insights into the IoT-based logistics service.

Conducting entrepreneurial activities can be full of risk as there are no established rules to follow. Previous research has explored the principles of entrepreneurship from the perspective of its impact factors, namely opportunity exploitation and resource exploitation. But studies about these two factors were conducted independently, so the findings are disparate and fragmented. The paper by Ge et al. applies system concepts in entrepreneurship research and proposes an opportunity and resource integrative entrepreneurial growth model, with potential application in new IoT entrepreneurial activities.

Social media have revolutionized communication in people’s lives with their explosive growth and widespread application. The ubiquity of social media has even penetrated into workplaces, facilitating organizational communication and knowledge work, which was impossible in the past. Motivated by the great success of social media, there is a strong interest to use social networking to improve the communication among different things in IoT. Social networks and IoT are not apart from each other. From a social networking stance to establish social relationships among intelligent objects, a new concept, Social Internet of Things (SIoT), is recently proposed. In analogy with the social media-based network, researchers explore the potential of SIoT by investigating social media’s impact in organizational contexts. There have been many studies noting the potential of social media in the workplace. The paper by Cao, Vogel et al. is an endeavor in exploring evaluating employee work performance with SIoT.

The paper by Sun et al. aims at exploring the correlations among entrepreneurial environment, market-oriented strategies, and entrepreneurial performance, in automobile industry, as automobile industry is one of the manufacturing industries that has been impacted by the emerging IoT technology (Bi and Cochran, 2014).

We are delighted to share this special issue with the readership of Internet Research. We hope that this special issue will serve our Internet Research readers as an avenue to gain a current perspective on IoT. We would specially like to thank the Editor, Professor Jim Jansen, for his encouragement and guidance throughout this endeavor. We are also deeply grateful to the many individual reviewers who worked with us so diligently. Without their time, effort, and support, this issue would never have come to be.

Professor Pan Wang -School of Automation, Institute of Systems Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

Professor Sohail Chaudhry - Department of Management and Operations/International Business, Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania, USA

Professor Ling Li - College of Business, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, USA

References

Bi, Z. and Cochran, D. (2014), “Big data analytics with applications”, Journal of Management Analytics, Vol. 1 No. 4, pp. 249-265

Fang, S., Xu, L., Zhu, Y., Liu, Y., Liu, Z., Pei, H., Yan, J. and Zhang, H. (2015), “An integrated information system for snowmelt flood early-warning based on Internet of Things”, Information Systems Frontiers, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 321-335

Han, W., Gu, Y., Wang, W., Zhang, Y., Yin, Y., Wang, J. and Zheng, L. (2015), “The design of an electronic pedigree system for food safety”, Information Systems Frontiers, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 275-287

Li, L. (2012), “Effects of enterprise technology on supply chain collaboration: analysis of China-linked supply chain”, Enterprise Information Systems, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 55-77

Li, S., Xu, L. and Zhao, S. (2015), “The Internet of Things: a survey”, Information Systems Frontiers, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 243-259

Reaidy, P., Gunasekaran, A. and Spalanzani, A. (2015), “Bottom-up approach based on Internet of Things for order fulfillment in a collaborative warehousing environment”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 159, pp. 29-40

Siemens (2015), “With intelligent integration into the future of manufacturing”, available at: http://w3.siemens.com/topics/global/en/industry/future-of-manufacturing/industrial-integration/Pages/industrial-integration.aspx (accessed December 31, 2013).

Whitmore, A., Agarwal, A. and Xu, L. (2015), “The Internet of Things-a survey of topics and trends”, Information Systems Frontiers, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 261-274

Xu, L. (2015), Enterprise Integration and Information Architecture, CRC Press, New York, NY

Xu, L., He, W. and Li, S. (2014), “Internet of Things in industries: a survey”, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 2233-2243

Yu, J., Xu, L., Bi, Z. and Wang, C. (2014), “Extended interference matrices for exploded view of assembly planning”, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 279-286