Value Flows in IoT Ecosystems: Towards an IoT Data Business Model

The promise of IoT technology to provide a ‘neural network for the physical world’ that opens new vistas for value creation has long been touted in information systems research. However, in many domains, this promise in large parts is still untapped due to clash between linear business models bound to singular organisations and distributed IoT infrastructures. In this paper, we propose a framework for conceptualising and quantifying value flows in IoT ecosystems and illustrate its potential usefulness for modelling the dynamics of IoT business models. We do so by presenting an illustrative system dynamics model of value flows in case of the Smart Office IoT ecosystem. Our research proposes venues of further research to model IoT value flows and thereby move closer to identifying specific IoT ecosystem value flows and their related business models.