Organizational Capabilities for Implementing IoT in SMEs

More and more companies have implemented Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in order to increase their competitive advantage. However, majority of them are large multinational organisations with substantial resources available to them. Small and medium size companies (SMEs) significantly lag behind in their adoption rate partially due to low interest, partially due to the lack of capabilities to make use of the opportunities these technologies offer. We adopt the perspective of dynamic capabilities and in an interview study among Austrian agricultural and special purpose engineering SMEs explore organisational capabilities needed to offer IoT enabled products and services. We identify at least seven distinctive capabilities, such as identifying customer needs, cooperation with the customer, designing appropriate services, acquiring and training IT experts, building partnerships, managing company culture and adapting marketing and sales approach.