Following almost two decades of working as ‘Master Inventor’ for a major international technology company, Dr. Shmuel Ur gave the title up a few years ago to become a – no less gripping – full-time independent inventor.He works with Intellectual Ventures and consults and invents for various start-ups. Though he is an expert on software testing with a focus on coverage and testing of multithreaded programs, his inventions span across a number of areas from gaming to social networks.
All this experience makes him an expert on intellectual property and monetization of ideas, which is exactly what his talk at the IoT 360 summit in 2014 focused on. We asked him a few questions about his opinions on the summit, and IoT as such.
In your opinion, in which way has the IoT 360 Summit contributed to the global debate on IoT?
In my opinion, the main contribution was connecting multiple crowds that generally don’t talk to each other enough – the academy and the industry, small and large companies – very nice contributions from different people, different companies and different geographies. There was also a nice mix of software and hardware.
What would you recommend to young start-uppers in the area of IoT? Which challenges do they have to accept?
I would recommend them to use the lean start-up methodology with its focus on checking that what they want to do is really needed by others, to experiment a lot, and to get as close to the customers as possible, early on. To validate that what they have in mind is what others need, and not be afraid to pivot when necessary.
The IoT 360 Summit will be held again in 2015. In your opinion, which big questions should be discussed at the next edition of the Summit?
The main issue, I think, is how to make all of it invisible. So that people who are not early adopters will gain the benefit without doing anything. A lot of smartness needs to be built in and a lot of understanding of how people operate. The issues are not exactly technological, but have a lot of technological implications.
