After arriving on the scene, launching Rocket Wagon Venture Studios at IoT Evolution Expo earlier this year, the parent company announced its second industry vertical studio recently, “New Mobility” being led smart mobility veteran Jochen (Joe) Renz.
Rocket Wagon Venture Studios is focused on IoT innovation with a mission to launch start-up companies from idea to exit, implemented as a series of vertically aligned studios guided by an enterprise IoT architectural framework. Established by Don DeLoach, a serial entrepreneur himself, with a background in big data analytics, security and IoT, the company is standing up highly focused studios designed to accelerate development and adoption of disruptive new solutions.
“The incumbents of the global automotive and transportation industry are facing the most substantial disruption since the invention of the assembly line by Henry Ford in 1913,” Renz said. Global macro trends including digitalization, globalization, climate change, urbanization and the scarcity of natural resources are resulting in the need to completely rethink mobility and transportation.
“In the New Mobility Studio we think of the car as an important building block in the future of multi-modal mobility, but we believe that much of the disruptive innovation happens around the vehicle and the broader mobility ecosystem,” Renz said. “We really think of this future ecosystem of mobility as a “System of Systems” where mobility and transportation converges with our telecommunications and energy infrastructure.” The “Internet of Things” will enable this new ecosystem and is the conduit to transform not only the automotive sector: “The emerging ecosystem of mobility will disrupt automotive, but also has a profound impact on telecommunications, energy, insurance, media and advertising as well as retail.”
The Rocket Wagon Venture Studios New Mobility team believes that the disruptive trends of human-centric, connected and autonomous mobility, the shift to electric vehicles and the emergence of on-demand, shared mobility services will create massive opportunities for innovations. Incumbents have been working on innovation concepts, but they remain challenged by industry-siloed thinking, scarcity of software talent and a myopic view of the incoming changes that will turn the industry on its head. “New business models will emerge at the edges of traditional industry value chains and create new cross-industry ecosystems,” Renz said. “We are hands-on entrepreneurs who partner with high-impact leaders to bring disruptive IoT innovation to life unconstrained by corporate policies or existing business models.”
Most incumbents have their hands full getting their organizations ready for the shift to electric mobility or automated driving and need to focus their internal resources on these initiatives. They also often lack the in house talent to envision technology-driven business models and execute quickly. Also, existing departmental organization and siloed thinking is hindering incumbents in developing innovations that are inherently cross-industry and relies on the convergence of multiple technologies to enable new business models. “At a time of exponential change where existing business models are at risk, we provide corporations access to innovation and create optionality around emerging technologies and future business models,” states Renz. The New Mobility studio is bringing together investors and corporate partners with founders that bring fresh ideas to the emerging ecosystem of mobility. Entrepreneurs can significantly de-risk their venture. “Our model is quite different from traditional approaches, including incubators and accelerators,” Renz said. “We fully support each new venture as active and engaged partners, providing ongoing development, staffing, operational and strategic guidance to scale.”
Rocket Wagon Venture Studios will provide the New Mobility studio with a converged technology stack based on robust core components and associated patterns and practices to accelerate development efforts and create synergies across vertically focused studios. “By leveraging Rocket Wagon Venture Studios technology, methodologies and best practices we can innovate faster and create more consistent outcomes,” Renz said. Building new ventures in IoT will require cross-domain technology skills including edge and cloud computing, artificial intelligence and Distributed Ledger Technologies. “The emerging opportunities in New Mobility not only require cross-industry ecosystem thinking, but also the ability to intelligently combine different technologies to enable the business models of the future”, says Renz. “The Internet of Things will be at the very core of this ecosystem.”
With a projected 500 Billion connected devices by 2030, IoT spend is expected to be 15X greater than the last three tech waves combined (mobile, internet, and PC), so Renz sees massive opportunities in an area where he has already been participating for many years. “We are at the cusp of a next generation web with the machine-to-machine economy at its core.”
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
